Manakamana

           Yesterday my family and 2 other families visited a temple near Kathmandu called Manakamana. The temple dates back to the 17^th century and is one of the most popular temples in the Middle Hills region of Nepal...its also reachable by a cable car! The day started out really early: we woke up at 3am and like any other normal (aka dysfunctional) family, we didn’t end up leaving until 5:30am. Thankfully we had reserved a mini van for all of us, so we got to ride the 5 hours in comfort. I shared the front seat with my little sister and one of her friends and was able to just plug into my ipod and relax/sleep the whole way there. Unfortunately the rest of the bus was not so lucky. As I think I have said in earlier blogs, Nepalis are almost notorious for their motion sickness. I may have been 2/14 people in the car who didn’t vomit literally the entire 5 hours. My poor 11 year old sister must have thrown up at least 15 times. We arrived at 10:30am and found that the place was packed. I’m talking Disneyland packed. Nepali families and the occasional white foreigner were all over the place, trying to form the semblance of a line to get tickets, except that it ended up just being a mass of hot sweaty bodies fighting to get ahead. We ended up waiting in line for 5 hours. Thank the lord above I had my umbrella with me because I would have been a lobster otherwise. The dads of the group were such troopers and stood in line the whole day while many of the moms and kids and me sat in the shade and ate ice cream. My 11 year old sister and one of the other younger girls actually never stopped throwing up the entire day unfortunately, so we all took turns running around trying to find plastic bags for them. They were such little troopers…my normal reaction when I am nauseous is to cry unfortunately, so I would have been a bawling mess if I was them. 

Beginning of our wait in line

The Austrian-designed cable car

Ok, so fast forward a really hot sweaty 5 hours and we finally reached the cable car! Its an Austrian-designed gondola and even has a special gondola car for the goats that are taken up to the temple to be slaughtered. Looks like any other gondola you would see at a ski hill or something. Nine of us crammed into a car and off we went! The ride in total took about 10 minutes and we went over 2 hillsides before getting to the top. My 9 year old sister started out the ride politely being like “Neha didi, nachalnus. Malaii dar laagyo” Neha didi, don’t move. I’m scared” After 5 minutes of the gondola ride I had to shift my weight and it it turned into a screaming “NACHALNUS!!!” DON’T MOVE!  My bad. My other sister and her friend continued to throw up into their little bags the whole way.

Cable car fun

Manakamana Temple

Unsuspecting people with a monkey over their heads

So we finally get to the top and we greeted by a little tourist village surrounding the temple. We took a family picture in front of a backdrop of the temple and when I saw the result, lets just say I’ve taken way better pictures in my life. Also everyone kept saying how pale I looked.  Not my fault. We reached the temple and proceeded to do puja, which is basically a worship of the temple. I kind of hung back and took in the scenery, mostly because there were so many people there but also because incense was so thick I could barely breathe, trash littered the ground, and goat/chicken/pigeon blood was splattered everywhere. The scene was awesome to watch though and the temple was just filled with massive amounts of people ringing bells and sprinkling rice everywhere. 

Our gifts for the temple

We visited on a Saturday, which is also Nepal’s holy day, so the temple was extra crowded with people sacrificing their animals. After snapping some pictures and receiving tikka (red rice on our foreheads) we grabbed some food and headed to the cable car to rejoin another impossibly long line to get back down the mountain. My little sister and her friend threw up all the food five minutes after we had eaten so 4 of us were able to cut the whole line and get back down early so she could rest. During this process, I got yelled at by a bunch of angry people and was confused because I was like why the hell cant I understand what you are saying, and then I realized they were speaking Hindi. So I just ran away.

Aastha and I at the end of the day

      Cue to 7pm and we finally leave the temple. Thus began one of the worst bus rides of my entire life. An hour in my stomach really started to hurt and I was like noooo this cannot be happening we have 4 hours to go. Long story shot, I made my bus pull over 3 times so I could avoid shitting my pants. Two of those times we stopped on the side of the road where my available facilities were a ditch and leaves. Woops, too many details there.  We finally got to Pokhara where we stopped for food and I sat curled up in a little ball of agony on the restaurant couch while everyone else ate. I finally took some medicine I forgot I had and managed to make it the 3 hours home without major disaster, and instead spent my time with my head out the bus window because I thought I was going to throw up. We got to town at 1am and then had to walk 45 minutes home and I really wanted to die. Our whole group was a mess. My little sister Aakirti had to be carried the whole way back because she hadn’t eaten anything the whole day, and all of the other women in the group had thrown up the whole way back. We were a sorry sight to see. I got home and passed out hard in my bed. And that was my trip to Manakamana! It was honestly a really great day spent with my family, except for the being ill part on the way home.