It’s my second visit to Kathmandu, in 2018. My first one took place in 2007 when my wife and me were backpacking all the way from the Monsoon-fed greenhouse of the Kathmandu Valley via the dramatic high altitude deserts of the Tibetan Himalayas, Chengdu, Chongking, and the West Lake in Hangzhou before we finally ended in Shanghai.  This time my business trip keeps me two weeks in Kathmandu and allows ample time to explore one of the most fascinating places on the Subcontinent. I take part in the frenzy of Holi, paint myself beyond recognition so that the guards had problems of granting me renewed access to my workplace.

I first revisit the purely Buddhist Bodinath temple which is luckily surrounded by multiple food stalls, where mostly Tibetan pilgrims and me were sharing momos, the Tibetan dumplings I could eat every minute. Later I shuttle to Swayambunath temple, holy to Buddhists and Hindus alike. At first I have to share the temple with some tourists and many more pilgrims doing clockwise circumambulations of the great stupa I I take my time, suddenly I am now on my own. Now, after sunset, I realise, that virtually hundreds of macaque monkeys have taken over the many shrines of the temple. I feel like I am on the Planet of the Apes.

The morning in Pokhara before my three day hike into the Annapurna region. Early before sunrise I head to the lake and wait for the drama, colourful boats swing back and forth, a stupa on a near mountain ridge id waiting for the first rays of sun. Suddenly I discover the giant ice world of the Annapurna, 8091m high, mirroring in the lake at dawn. On my hike I am mostly alone. At lunch time after traversing a wonderful pine forest I come to a higher plateau where lots of stone slabs have been piled up to form little stupa- Beyond two picturesque little streams I arrive at a little wooden shack and decide that I am hungry. I order, of course, momos . I wait outside in the mountain sun, with some impressive Himalayan peaks looming above me. An old lady with a nice smile and a rugged face, obviously the boss of the house, invites me into her kitchen.For more than half an hour, I can watch her cutting the vegetables, preparing the pork, kneading and dividing the dough into balls, rolling the balls into thin circles,  putting the fillings in the centre of one circle, and bringing all the pinched edges of the circle together to cover the filling, finally steaming the momos for 10 mins until they look transparent. Yummy! I can’t remember when I last felt so close to paradise.