A Wonderful Wander
A colourful journey: a 2-week introduction to the jewellery and handicrafts of Nepal
This trip could just as easily be called Bishnu and Wendy’s Wonderful Wander. It will run in the first two weeks of March 2011-Nepal’s Year of Tourism and, with a group of 8 (our maximum) will cost approximately AU$1200 (US$1100) which will cover guides, food accommodation, internal transport and a number of meals (see below). It does not include external airfares, beverages or gratuities.
INTERESTED? NEED MORE INFO? CONTACT US
WE’RE HAPPY TO ANSWER YOU DIRECTLY
About the trip
This off-the-beaten-track trip is for flexible, curious and good-humoured people who are interested in a “real” introduction to some of the fantastic culture and handicrafts of Nepal, particularly those of the women. The small group (6-8 maximum) will suit people who would not usually contemplate a group tour and the emphasis will be on a shared experience rather than a heavily guided one.
We’ll visit markets and temples, see exquisite handicrafts being made, meet the talented creators in their own environments and explore some of our favourite sources of inspiration and supplies.
Accommodation
As well as exploring Kathmandu, we will be traveling in less tourist oriented places so our accommodation will vary. In Kathmandu we will enjoy the luxury of a beautifully restored Newar home in Thamel. We will eat at our favourite restaurants and explore the city with a local and a bead junkie-an excellent combination.
Accommodation will be clean and comfortable. There will usually be western toilets which may even flush. Some rooms have lovely bright pink walls for no extra cost. For a couple of nights, accommodation will be clean and cheerful. We will have gorgeous smiling and friendly hosts who will greet us like old friends and welcome us like royalty but they may not be so into thick mattresses, hot water, inside toilets, and chocolates on the pillows at night. In fact, toilets here will be clean squats and you will need to carry inner sheets, soap and toilet paper.
Food outside Kathmandu will be tasty and generally delicious variations of dal bhat. More western choices will sometimes be available. Coeliacs and vegetarians are well catered for. Enough preamble, here we go.
Day 1:
People will arrive in Kathmandu and meet at our delightful accommodation. Those with energy can begin to explore the delights of Thamel or you can choose to relax around Courtyard’s courtyard with gin and tonics and recover from your journey. We will eat together at a local favourite restaurant and get an early night ready for our flight tomorrow.
Cost Includes: Transport from airport; Accommodation at Courtyard
Day 2:
We head east fairly fast to allow time at the end of our trip in case we need flexibility with strikes. We fly to Biratnagar and taxi north via a unique lunch stop in Itahari to Dharan where one of your guides has lived for over three years.
You will stay at the Dreamland Hotel and eat at one of several clean if somewhat slow restaurants. We can explore the Purano Bajaar (old market) looking at fresh fruit and vegetables, smelling bags of fresh spices, marveling at the woven bamboo items and expressing our opinions on the dried fish. Why not take a rickshaw home?
Cost includes: Flight, vehicle and accommodation.
Day 3:
Now we get down to business. Today a local silversmith, Suraj, will talk to us about the gorgeous array of jewelry worn by the different ethnic groups in Nepal. He will have lots of examples and I will be wearing others!!! He will talk about the religious and cultural significance of different bits and pieces and we’ll watch silversmiths at work.
We’ll also visit the pote warehouse, an Aladdin’s cave of seed beads and one of the two biggest in Nepal. We’ll learn about their uses, the ladies who string them, the seasons they are worn, the significance of colours etc. This is the best place to buy strings of beads at prices lower than you’d find in Kathmandu. Particularly for fabric artists and bead lovers, this will be exciting! You will never see them this cheap anywhere in KTM. This place is not normally open for individual sales. It is also not particularly known for customer service but the prices make it well worthwhile and things have improved.
And in case we have not indulged our passion for frippery, we will then head to Dharan Women’s World where our host will happily toss metres of gorgeous fabrics over mattresses and us. We can look at beautifully embroidered fabrics; hand dyed silks, and magnificent saris. If you are a bloke not really into the above, we can set you up white water rafting down the Tamar river!
Costs include: Accommodation. You’re absolutely on your own with silver and bead purchases so do bring a few rupees for this in case you are tempted.
Day 4:
Dharan to Dhankuta. Dhankuta is a typical hill town and the administrative headquarters of the district. It is a delightful place and characteristic of many hill villages. We’ll walk (30 mins) to Debrabus, where we can watch dakka being woven. We can chat with the weavers and go to a showroom where their finished fabric has been made into a great range of products from beautiful saris to shawls, purses and scarves. If we are lucky, we’ll be there on Thursday and can visit the wonderfully colourful hat bajaar so you can take more Lonely Planet photos to impress and amaze your friends and family. It is held on a large stone platform under the shade of a sprawling pipal tree and you can buy bras here hanging on coat hangers and the hottest chillies you will ever have in your life. Or not.
Cost includes: Taxi, accommodation-which may be home-stay if the planets are in alignment.
Day 5:
We have some options here depending on the interests of the group. We could take a short walk in the hills around Dhankuta or drive to the frontier town of Hile. We have lots of choices before returning to Dharan on a road which is an engineering masterpiece constructed by the British in the 80’s. We cross the mighty Tamar River and will be awed by the scenery we pass.
Cost includes: taxi, accommodation
Day 6:
Today is varied and fascinating. We watch ladies doing “boutique”! This is the elaborate and intricate embroidery of sequins and metallic threads of chiffon to produce the sari fabrics you’ll see in abundance. Talk about eye candy!
We also take in the temple trifecta-visiting the three temples Dharan is famed for Keep your eyes open. As well as being an insight into the spirituality of the people here, you’ll also see magnificent jewellery and the beautiful fabrics as part and parcel of daily life-not a tourist directed cultural show. You will see women wearing incredible, heavy naugedis; intricate gold tilharis, or necklaces with amber beads the size of small eggs. Face jewellery is common and “traditional dress” is…well, traditional!
This is not a tourist destination so some people will be as interested in you as you are in them. And if you wear a sari, they’ll be thrilled to bits. We can just roam – a national pastime, or may take the opportunity to head to the beauty parlour, get our eyebrows threaded and our hands painted with the gorgeous henna mehendi designs that inspire the “sari” beads made by the ladies in Birtamod. I certainly will.
Men can get a brilliant haircut for less than a dollar that will include a head massage like you’ve never known unless you ask for the cut only.
Cost includes: taxi, accommodation
Day 7:
Today we head to Birtamod. This trip will reveal another aspect of Nepal that many tourists don’t see-the Terai, the food bowl. We travel the East-West Highway passing traditional homes reminiscent of wooden Queenslanders. We’ll see rice, banana, sugar cane and other grain fields. We may see the biggest pigs you’ve ever seen in your life.
And the colours! My dears you will need a notebook to jot down the colourful combinations you see in the saris of the ladies we pass. They will be walking with massive loads on their heads or backs, or riding pushbikes with an elegance that defies belief. We will stay in Birtamod and be welcomed excitedly and delightedly by Kopila Basnet and the board of Sammunat Nepal.
Cost includes: Taxi, accommodation.
Day 8:
Today will be one very special day. Here we will relieve you of the clay you may have been couriering and will have one of the most fun times you’ve had in your lives-a clay day with ladies of Sammunat. Whether you have clayed before or not, you will learn enough to create a unique and special memento of your time here.
This will be a very traditional Nepali day-you will rise early and have chiya or black tea. Then you will have the “first dal bhat” and head to the Sammunat office and your lesson. You will be plied with drinks like chiya, black tea, hot lemon etc until snacks at 3-4. Then you will have time to write in your journals, read, maybe take a rickshaw ride, chat with Kopila, or wander the back streets of Birtamod-staggeringly different to the highway they run from. Then, you will get second dal bhat followed by bed!
Cost includes: Food, accommodation, lesson, materials.
Day 9:
We take our vehicle back to Dharan via Damak, driving past tea gardens and market towns. The afternoon in Dharan is free for you to pursue your particular interests or revisit locations you think need a second look. There is another wonderful fruit and veggie market and countless jewellery stores. The energetic could walk to the river nearby.
Cost includes: taxi, accommodation.
Day 10:
After an early breakfast, we go to Janakpur, the old capital of the Mithila Kingdom that straddled the India and Nepal border. The women of Mithili are famous for their primitive and gorgeously coloured paintings.
Originally painted on the walls of their homes, they now work at the beautifully designed and located Janakpur Women’s Development Centre and paint these on paper, ceramics and fabrics to create magnificent works of art.
We will spend the remainder of today and tomorrow morning in Janakpur, visiting the development centre and exploring the famous temples and ponds of this fascinating and significant town. The mossies love the ponds too so bring mosquito protection!
Cost includes: taxi, accommodation
Day 11:
We have the morning in Janakpur and a highlight will be a visit to the ornate, Mughal inspired Janaki Mandir. The temples in Janakpur celebrate the love of Ram and Sita and are particularly popular places for marrying couples to visit. Women dress up in their finery and the whole thing is spectacularly colourful.
This afternoon we fly to Kathmandu. Before you go, look at the wonderful murals on the walls of the airport!
Cost includes: Flight to Kathmandu, taxi, accommodation
Day 12:
Now we can explore the handicraft lovers’ treasures of Kathmandu that will not be “my brother he has a very nice shop ma’am”. One of our first stops will be the Boudha area. There is a fantastic stupa here and just about every tour takes this in but we will also see some hidden delights.
We will visit Pasang at Authentic Himalayan Textiles. Pasang collects old Tibetan clothing, the monks’s robes and the aprons made using traditional dyes. He and his team painstakingly deburr, wash and re-piece the fabric to create stunningly beautiful works of art. Just ask my mother. We will be able to watch part of this process.
We’ll have a bird’s eye view of the stupa for lunch and will also drop into the shop where I get my Tibetan chubas made. Just to say hi. She does happen to have a fabulous range of brocades, prayer flags, silks and woolen fabric should you be interested.
Cost includes: taxi, accommodation
Day 13:
Another very special day. In the morning, we visit the Association of Craft Producers who handle the sales of the beads that the ladies in Birtamod make. We will meet some of the staff and may get to see felt making and the production of many other items. ACP is a Fair Trade producer and their shop front is the beautiful Dhukuti in Patan.
In the afternoon we will visit the children at Sonrisa orphanage in an outer Kathmandu suburb and do some beading with them on the rooftop. We will teach them to make their own necklaces (or remind them) and chat with Bishnu and the others that make that place so special. And we’ll try to squeeze in a visit to ladies making the Lokta paper-the beautiful paper made from Daphne bark.
Cost includes: taxi, accommodation
Day 14:
Today we will take in the beautiful Garden of Dreams, a magnificently restored garden of one of the old Rana palaces. I can also take people to a good jewellery shop we trust and like and shops where we can buy turquoise, amber, lapis and silver without being too hassled.
We’ll wander down into Asan Tol and Inra Chowk and soak up the atmosphere and begin to plan the next trip!
Tonight we’ll share our last group meal at the lovely Thamel House Restaurant and have the traditional set menu which includes a sampling of rakshi-Nepal’s favourite liqueur.
At this juncture, it would be easy to add on a trip to Pokhara, Chitwan or to head off for a longer trek. We can arrange this for you.
INTERESTED? NEED MORE INFO? CONTACT US
WE’RE HAPPY TO ANSWER YOU DIRECTLY