Vishnu Kshetri
Sunday, 4th of September, the destination of our odyssey for this time was the magnificent hike from Changu Narayan to Nagarkot. We would drive up to the Changu temple (hill) start the hike descending to Telkot village. Then walk up the Jalpa Devi hill and again descend to a small village of "Pipalbot." Finally we would be walking up the final assault all the way to the Nagarkot hill tower at an altitude of 2158m above the sea level. Speaking about Changu Narayan, it is one of the earliest religious settlements, set on a rock peninsula running from the Nagarkot range to the east. Changu would have been prominent when the valley was a lake. It is also the holiest shrines of Vaishnava followers of the valley with its origin dating back to well beyond the 4^th century AD! After paying devotion to Lord Vishnu, we began our journey to our ultimate destination, Nagarkot. The journey commenced around 8:30 AM. We took some snaps while paying homage to the Lord in the courtyard of temple. The journey of miles began with gentle stride on slanting stiff earthen motorable road which showed us way to a sloppy hill trails. On right hand side,we could enjoy the beautiful rice field terrace, along with the sights of Bhaktapur valley civilization, following the trend of modernization. On the other side appease valley of Shankhu city with traditional settlement carved by the gently flowing "Sali" river. After walking on for about an hour or so, we reached the Australian Funded Community Forest full of lush green trees. Too bad we did not have any arboreal or a botanical expert to classify them. After climbing a concrete staircase built by Paramhansh religious group for an hour, our next stop was Pipalbot. On way to Pipalbot we rested a bit at the Jalpa devi temple, where Bhaskar got rid of a leech that had found its way to the middle finger of his right foot! Despite being the monsoon season there were almost no leech on this trail compared to the leech attack in the case of the Jamacho hike where everybody got bitten except for Bhaskar! At Pipalbot, we took some refreshment and rested for a while. The track took the form of upward slope accompanied by typical village sight. We came across the traditional way of making a dram. After an hour and half journey we reached Nagarkot bazaar. As soon as we arrived at Nagarkot, a gentle drizzle showered upon us. To go together with weather we bought a fowl for our lunch on the hill. We asked a local restaurant to prepare a lunch for all of us and they prepared a delicious one, we really enjoyed the meal. We walked for another hour after the lunch to climb up to Nagarkot tower. Nagarkot is a very popular hill station famous for its panoramic view of the Himalayan mountain range, world-class resorts and fine local restaurants (even recommended by Lonely Planet!). Further it is a very popular destination for the Kathmanduites who flock together there to catch the glimpse of breathtaking sunrise. Unfortunately, we could not see panoramic view of Kathmandu valley, as the foggy weather began to cover us while we were at the tower. However, on the way to the tower we could see the Rohini village, the Melamchi riverbed along with the Ghimire village. The gentle cool breeze at the tower revived us from heat and congestion of the Kathmandu valley. We felt as it we were in the middle of the cloud with the wet mist drenching our skin with calm droplets and the greenery soothing our eyes (the green color is the middle of the spectrum, very good for eyes!). The excursion was superb and left all of us very relaxed both mentally and physically. This was of course due to the joyous company of Amit, Amulya, Bhaskar, Niraj, Raju, Surendra and Vishnu. This time we hiked 15 kilometers (9.4 miles) that lasted for 5 hours in total. Nevertheless, this noteworthy trip was not the end, but the milestone showing us another exciting journey ahead.
