Nagarkot

In late September, during the Nepali festival of Desai or Dashain, we travelled in a taxi up to Nagarkot on the rim of the Kathmandu Valley. It's a place we remembered fondly from last time we were here, and we weren't disappointed. For each of the three days we stayed in Nagarkot, we saw wonderful views of the Himalaya - the "Langtang Himal" to be exact. The photo of the single peak shows Langtang which is often visible from our rooftop in Patan - if we get up early enough to see it.

I woke up the first morning at about 5.45, looked out the window without getting out of bed, and said to Mike, "That's mountains I'm seeing!" We went downstairs quickly and joined groups of Indians, Chinese tourists from Beijing, and Nepali staff on the wide hotel verandah. The hotel site makes the most of the outlook, and coffee is available very early for all those wanting to take in the mountain views. It's fun trying to determine the names of visible peaks from the Himalayan chart we have, and watching the ever changing patterns of clouds and emergent peaks.The "horizon" shifts constantly - what is cloud and what mountain? - giving the whole scene an exotic, mysterious air.

The scene is as close as anything I can imagine to the fabled "Shangri-la", especially with the watercolour hues and outlines of grey, lavender, indigo and mauve that characterise the view in the early morning light. Deep valleys below the peaks are usually cloud-filled, their white puffs sometimes hugging the green slopes till late morning, while Everest / Sagarmatha is well to the east and indistinct to the naked eye from that distance. Kites (the bird kind) catch the thermal drifts above the nearby rice terraces, soaring effortlessly.

We walked around the hilltop roads a great deal while there, and encountered many people in their Desai finery, especially the reds and greens of traditional clothing that are popular during this season. Children also fly kites (the paper kind) and enjoy the traditional bamboo swings set up just for the ten days of Desai.