Mountain tops

We travelled to the edge of the city, passing the only underpass in the country, going over the only one kilometer of smooth bitumen. After that it was pure dust. Anyway, we arrived at a very new and very safe looking cable car, which took us up to 2550 meters, much to Ray's delight, who sat with his back to the view and his eyes closed.

If the smog wasn't there (huh) we could have seen Mt Everest, but we did see some snow covered mountains that were over 7000 meters. From our mountain we looked down on a plane flying through the valley. It was very scenic and got even better when I had a great espresso. Who'd have thought?

Ray and I shared the return gondola journey with a Nepalese family, who were much amused with Ray, who was doing his usual eye closing stance. Our next stop was the monkey temple, which Ray and I had visited earlier. But this time I managed to get Ray to part with his money to buy a brass bicycle. Don't worry, It is not full size, so we can fit it in our luggage.

We returned home, went to the rooftop and enjoyed a bottle of wine with the lovely Heather, one of our group. The sun setting behind our hill, and the view to the city was a fitting last evening in the city. We are off to the village tomorrow.

Part of the Kathmandu Valley just to the north of Kathmandu. Apart from the everpresent smog you may be able to make out what appears to be numerous long grey buildings. These are market gardens covered with either plastic or corrugated iron. This and the next few images are from the lower section of the cable car station.

Brenda with some of the tourists at the bottom of the cable car. The cable car was names Nepal's top tourist attraction of 2017. It is about 18 months old and is well maintained. Don't worry, I had a good look.

Sone flags all in the distinctive shape of the Nepal Flag (like to triangles) fluttering in front of the start of the climb to Chandrageri Hills.

Here we get a pretty good view of the market gardens and farms. This is taken from the gondola as we went up. I wasn't admiring the view although i did take a few looks as we went up.

We were to discover that landslides are everywhere in Nepal. In this case there were no villages in the way, never to be seen again.

The happy couple.

The top of the cable car. We travelled for around 6 or 7 minutes going over some very deep ravines in the process. A canadian friend said at the start it was similar to the cable car at Bampf until she reached the second ravine and looked out and down. No, probably about twice as big she said.

This is a resort under construction just down from the top of Chandragiri, but part of the national park grounds

This is a small settlement on the othern side of the mountain to the Kathmandu Valley. We are at 2550 metres so it's a long way down.

Looking down from the high lookout which we paid about 40c each to access. This is a new temple and shrine built at the top of the hill. On a good day you can see Mt Everest in this direction.

More about the shrine.