Champa’s hometown of Ilam, Nepal, is bustling these days with new shops, banks, bakeries, schools, hotels and people.
But it’s still best known for tea. Lush plantations surround this town whose population now exceeds 50,000. Ilam is the heart of Nepal’s tea industry, with rolling hills, terraced plantations, and a favorable climate and soil that yield a product similar to the better-known tea of neighboring Darjeeling, India.
We traveled here several days ago, mainly to visit with family and friends. But we’ve also taken time to explore the bazaar and stroll beside the tea gardens, as you see here with our niece Mangila and some of our grandnieces and grandnephew.
After one walk, we stopped at a shop where I treated all of the kids to ice cream, something that was unavailable when I served in the Peace Corps here in the late 1970s.
There was a single bakery back then, selling only white bread. Now there are several, with display cases featuring fancy birthday cakes. This tea-growing center even has a coffee shop where you can order a cappuccino.
Something else that was unimaginable when I lived here was cheese. Now there’s a nearby cheese factory run by a Sherpa entrepreneur who learned cheese-making from Swiss experts. He makes a delicious hard cheese that we sampled and brought home to eat.
Ilam’s food scene is not the only thing that’s changed. Notably, there are now vehicles everywhere — mainly motorcycles and scooters, but also buses, jeeps, cars and auto rickshaws. I also discovered some new sights, for me at least, such as a tea garden statue honoring the Limbu ethnic group and the Bhaludhunga ecological park
At almost every turn, I’ve been reminded what a beautiful and interesting place this is. I wish more people knew about it, especially foreign visitors looking to escape Kathmandu’s craziness and discover the “real Nepal.”
Ilam is relatively easy to reach. It’s a quick flight from Kathmandu to Bhadrapur followed by a 3-4 hour jeep ride on a winding road that is in generally good condition. Good, inexpensive hotels are available. The air is clear. The view is gorgeous when there’s no fog. Monkeys await you at the temples and Ilam’s friendly people are eager to meet you, too.
You should come see for yourself, even if you’re not a tea enthusiast.
Kathmandu is vastly more crowded, polluted and traffic-jammed than when I lived here during my second year as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the late 1970s.
And yet, it remains magical, at least to me.
Champa and I have had a busy week here following our recent road trip to some of Nepal’s less-visited places. We’re leaving again on Sunday for her hometown, Ilam, in Nepal’s eastern tea-growing region.
While we’ve been in Kathmandu, we’ve been revisiting some of the city’s iconic sights, like the Bodhanath Stupa, above two photos.
We’ve explored new places for us, like the Changu Narayan temple in Bhaktapur, above.
We’ve been visiting with family and friends, such as the Shresthas, who gave us an incredibly warm welcome and dinner.
We’ve met up with friends and family from back home who are also in Nepal now, such as Sarla and Sudhir from Virginia, top photo, and Steve and Muna from Vermont, bottom.
We had tea with our friends Anne and Raju, who once lived in Boston but now make their home in Nepal, something we’ve been thinking about on a shorter-term basis while our own country is so unsettled.
We visited an acupressure doctor, who treated both of us.
We had a great conversation with the director of Peace Corps Nepal, who brought us up to date on their programs and challenges.
Best of all, we’ve enjoyed hanging out at the home of our nephew Shankar and his wife Bindu, who’ve taken very good care of us. That’s their children Senchhen and Lajesha, bottom photo, playing a card game we brought from home.
My week ended with a surprise birthday dinner at a beautiful restaurant outside Bhaktapur. It was a fitting end to our week in a city that still holds magic for me. I’m always happy to return.
First-time travelers to Nepal typically visit the magnificent temples and other treasures of the Kathmandu Valley. If they’re adventurous and have the time, they may also go trekking near Mount Everest or someplace else.
That’s what I did back in 1975 when I first discovered this magical country. I fell in love with Nepal, even before I met Champa, and I remain smitten with it a half-century later.
We’ve returned here many times but have usually been so busy visiting our family that we didn’t explore much beyond the tourist trail.
Until now.
We just returned from a memorable road trip to several places we’d long been hoping to see: a remote valley unlike the rest of Nepal, a picturesque town atop a mountain and the homeland of the king who unified Nepal.
We enjoyed all three places — Mustang, Bandipur and Gorkha — as well as our stop in Pokhara, a more familiar destination famous for its beautiful lake and snow-covered peaks.
If you’re considering a trip to Nepal and want something different from the usual itinerary, you might consider a similar trip. We did ours in five busy days with a private jeep, traveling with our nephew, Shankar, and his wife, Bindu. They hired our driver but you could arrange something similar with a local travel agency.
Mustang is a distinctive region of stark landscapes and traditional culture. Parts of it were closed to foreigners until recently and permits are still required to visit (although easy to obtain). We stayed in the main town of Jomsom, home of the Thakali people. Apples grow in many of its fields and its stone houses are adorned with prayer flags. We gazed out of our hotel window to see snowy peaks and small planes landing across the street at a tiny airport.
Mustang is best known for Muktinath, a temple and pilgrimage site for both Buddhists and Hindus. Champa and Bindu visited it while I remained in Jomsom with Shankar since I wasn’t feeling well that day. I was sorry to miss it but still happy to finally see Mustang, which was so mysterious when I first came to Nepal.
Bandipur, our next stop, was familiar to me since I did my practice teaching there during my Peace Corps training in 1977. I remembered it as being spectacularly beautiful — and it remains so, although much more developed.
Bandipur is a traditional Newari village built atop a small mountain. Back when I lived there, the usual way to reach it was by climbing a long series of stone steps. Now you can drive up or take a cable car, which we rode for fun. Cars are banned in the town center, which has a growing number of souvenir shops and small hotels catering to tourists who have begun discovering this charming escape from Kathmandu’s traffic and pollution.
We stayed in a lovely hotel — two private rooms with five dinners and breakfasts for $68 — and the owner was amazed that I’d taught there so many years earlier. He told some friends and the next morning we were joined at breakfast by one of my former fellow teachers and his wife, who’d worked with the Peace Corps. That’s Bidya Prasad Shrestha and Laxmi Shrestha in the photo with us. Amazing.
Gorkha is a regional center best known as the birthplace of Nepal’s unifier, King Prithvi Narayan Shah. He’s a bit like George Washington in our country and lived at roughly the same time. Gorkha also lends its name to the Gurkha soldiers, who serve in other countries and are known worldwide for their bravery.
We only spent a brief time there, mainly to climb up to the Gorkha Durbar, a 16th-century palace featuring both monkeys and traditional architecture. Nearby is the Manakamana Temple, which we’d visited previously and is a great place to stop and visit via cable car while driving between Kathmandu and Pokhara.
Pokhara’s tourist crowds are bigger than ever, with hotels, restaurants, shops and travel agencies filling the streets near the famous “fish tail” mountain and lake. Nonetheless, we were happy to return. We strolled beside the lake and enjoyed dinner at one of the many outdoor restaurants along the shore.
When the rhododendrons are blooming, the lake is shimmering and the famous mountains appear — Annapurna, Dhaulagiri and others — few places on Earth are more stunning than Pokhara.
We returned to Kathmandu just in time to celebrate Nepali New Year. We’ll be visiting with several friends and family this week and will then head east to Champa’s hometown, Ilam. From there we’ll drive through the tea gardens and mountains to Samalbung, the small village where we’ve been helping to build a new school with generous support from many Not Exactly Retired readers.
For now, we’re savoring our road trip to some of Nepal’s less-visited places. We’re very glad we finally made it to Mustang, Bandipur and Gorkha — three destinations that I hope others will discover, too.
"Not Exactly Retired" 