Friday – 

When we woke in Namaste guesthouse, the storm of the previous night had passed and it was a beautiful blue morning sky. We ordered our breakfast from Prem – I (Rob) obviously opting for the large option including eggs, potatoes, buffalo sausage, and tomatoes – who brought it up to our room along with a mugful of sweet tea each. Once we had eaten, we packed up and said our goodbyes to Prem and Ian, and to what had been an unexpected highlight of the trip. 

We set out back into the village and towards the monastery, then swung north to walk to the larger town of Dhulikhel by the circuitous, scenic route. This took us up over a crest of the hill and gave glorious views of the valley and the back of Namobuddha monastery on the adjacent hill. We walked for some time, passing through more rural villages with their attendant Buddhist and HIndu shrines. (Eagle-eyed observers may note my compass which was not strictly required but Kieran, a dear friend, had bought it for me so needed to make sure I had evidence of its use).

At one point we passed a huge hotel complex being built on the hillside, and on several other occasions passed other hotels which looked to be in various states of completion before they were abandoned. The hillside along which we were walking boasted views of the Himalayas north of Kathmandu, but it remained resolutely too hazy for us to see them. The hotels were clearly banking on the views as their selling point, but it seemed that most had run out of money before they could get up and running. 

The walk to Dhulikhel from Namobuddha was all of about three hours, and the last hour took us slowly up a road carved into the side of a particularly large foothill, then turned sharply around and led down the other side to Dhulikhel itself. The first stretch boasted wonderful views into the valleys, all of which were terraced with tiny plots of land and dotted with settlements. Along this second stretch were innumerable hotels all called things like “Hotel Good View”, “Hotel Snow View”, or “Hotel Vista”. There seemed to be no tourists in sight (though granted we were now in the shoulder seasons), and the whole place had the feeling of the bust after a boom. 

Dhulikhel itself was not much to write home about. It was built up around the junction between two major highways coming from the east into Kathmandu, and had little of the charm or architecture that we had seen elsewhere in Nepal. We were tired and footsore by the time we arrived, and found a restaurant that was trying to be of the modern Western-style and nearly succeeding. The food was pretty good, and we felt well accomplished in reaching the town and the end of our hike in such good time. 

Once we’d eaten and found an ice-cream, we tried in vain to recruit a taxi to take us the hour or so drive home. We gave up after a little while, and walked to the bus rank which was filled with old, beat up buses and seemingly directed by an 11 year old child. I asked the 11 year old which bus to take to Kathmandu, and he pointed to a bus that was clearly parked and empty. I pointed at a bus that looked like it was ready to leave, and he pointed back to the parked bus. I asked where the bus that was ready to leave was going to, and he said to Kathmandu. We looked at each other for a while, and I said we were getting on the bus that was about to leave. He shrugged, and we boarded and paid our fare.

The bus was hot and the sweaty leather seats were tiny, but we sat together and, when the bus was moving and the windows open, the ride wasn’t too bad. The driver and the conductor, who hung out of the open door, communicated through a series of clicks, whistles and slaps on the side of the bus which was fascinating to watch. We crawled for a couple of hours through the traffic of Kathmandu until we were close enough to the hotel to disembark (which meant practically jumping out of the moving bus) and find a taxi to take us home. 

By the time we were back at Newa Chen, we were both happily exhausted and ready for a quiet evening. We ordered some burgers on Foodmandu and sat on our coir matting eating them, before spending the rest of the evening reading, chatting and otherwise relaxing and eventually making our way to bed. 

Saturday – 

On Saturday morning we were still feeling like taking it easy. We had a slow breakfast at the hotel watching the little birds in the courtyard, and picked up our reliably delicious 20p street sel roti with a coffee. Back in the room we both did some yoga and caught up on admin from the couple of days without much internet etc. After revisiting an earlier find of Foodmandu delivered falafel wraps for lunch, we got a taxi to a painting studio we had read about online. 

The place was called House of Palettes, and was essentially an art studio where you paid for a blank canvas, and could freely use the acrylics and brushes for however long you pleased over however many days you pleased. It was on the same complex as a modern bar/restaurant from which you could order drinks or snacks to have while you painted. It was staffed by a group of young artists who in theory could advise/help you, but they had their hands full practically doing the paintings for young children and anyway neither of us are exactly aspiring for perfection. We ordered a pint and a cocktail and settled in with our ideas. 

I (Ellie) spent far too long sketching my idea from a photo we took in a botanical garden in Kolkata and frankly could have put hours away before touching paintbrush to canvas if I hadn’t had the confidence boost of a couple of mojitos. Before long though we’d both covered our canvases and large parts of our hands in shades of green, yellow, red and blue and the time flew. It was pretty mindful and engrossing and we were both saying we should get some cheap acrylics and do this at home! A big mix of people seem to use the studio – from some really really good artists around our age or older to some rowdy children whose parents clearly wanted an hour’s respite. The peace was intermittently disturbed by one particular child across from Rob who wrecked absolute havoc on the place whenever an eye was turned (bless her), getting her hands into every paint pot. At one point she was about to push her painting over into Rob’s pint when he tried to stabilise it and in doing so managed to tip her freshly painted canvas down onto her little head. Luckily, both her and her supervisors seemed unbothered and she was already so covered in paint it didn’t matter much. 

Before we knew it it was 6pm and the studio was closing up for the day, so we headed over to the restaurant/bar opposite for some delicious snacky dinner. Having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, we walked home back across to the more touristy Patan we were staying in. We passed the evening playing our newfound favourite card game for 2 – cribbage – and watching an episode of Bob Ross’ Joy of Painting, now inspired painters. 

Sunday –

Similarly, Sunday was a slower day as we made the most of our last day with a living room. We had breakfast as usual in the courtyard, though we were becoming a little resentful the limited options and lack of anything resembling a half-decent cup of black tea with milk. Ellie had cycled through a variety of options that wasn’t the fried lentil bread that I always had as the best of a bad bunch, but unfortunately the porridge was mainly water, the yoghurt severed with the muesli was split and smelt funny, and the fruit salad was a bowl of chopped apple. But, there was of course always sel roti and coffee to considerably brighten the mood. 

We had the north Patan walk from our guidebook scheduled for the morning, and I led us around the neighbourhood to see yet more beautiful little temples, shrines, and rickety old backstreets and hidden courtyards. The walk started at the colourfully painted city gate, then took us past a variety of Hindu shrines and into a small courtyard with a large Buddha statue. From there, we passed a number of small stupas and sunken water tanks, before circling back round to the larger temples near our hotel. There were probably some interesting facts about a few of these mentioned in the walking instructions, but we’ve seen so many temples lately it’s hard to remember what was what! 

By noon, we were getting hungry and so we walked the half an hour or so back towards the House of Palettes painting studio and its adjacent cafe. After having lunch in the cafe, we set ourselves back up in the studio to finish our masterpieces. Mine was pretty much ready to go, so I spent a hour or so adding some more colour to the sea and repainting the little yacht on the horizon, while Ellie had several large, blank patches of canvas to fill. 

Once I’d finished, I spent the rest of the time watching Ellie paint, as well as writing and uploading the Patan I blog. We were largely left alone by the artists that ran the studio, who busied themselves doing their own paintings, or satisfying pushy parents by commandeering small childrens’ artworks to make them look better. By the late afternoon, we were both finished and took our little canvases back with us on the walk home. 

As we’ve said previously, the novelty of going out for a meal has worn off a little from three months of doing nothing but, so we have been relying a little more on food delivery especially since we had a dining table to eat at in New Chen. We ordered in some tacos and sat on the floor eating them before settling in for one of our titanic games of chess. I had spent about thirty seconds Googling chess strategy, from which I came away with the mantra “control the centre of the board”. I had no idea what this meant, but charged out anyway with my knights and rooks only for them to be cruelly and summarily taken from me by a more considered and, dare I say, heartless offensive by Ellie. After a couple of hours of valiant and, at times, desperate defence by a lone rook and queen, my king was cornered and the game was up. This leaves the games table for the trip at Ellie 7 (1 game of rummy, 3 games of cribbage, 2 games of chess, 1 game of pool), Rob 0. By the time we had finished it was getting late, and we headed off to bed for our last night in Patan. 

After Patan, we have a bit of a quicker tour of some of the other districts of the Kathmandu valley (Bhaktapur and Budhanilkantha) before spending the last few days in Kathmandu itself. In the next blog, we will cover the three days we had in the historic city state of Bhaktapur. 

Until then, 

Ellie & Rob