General Category Posts. Please also see other categories below.

Nepal Holiday and happiness!

Holiday to Nepal

Holiday to Nepal

As many who?ve traveled with us to Nepal will know, on our tour we visit the birthplace of the Buddha, and in this?spiritual couple of days; we explore how to create more happiness in our lives ? regardless of any religion. We?ll be led by our lovely Buddhist monk on this part of the holiday which is fascinating.

The ?four noble truths? of Buddhism suggests that our attachment to desires can lead to unhappiness, but as you?ll probably find out, this doesn?t mean that you can?t enjoy desires ? even the simpler ones like desiring a cup of tea and then drinking it ? the key word is ?attachment?. ?If you?re attached to a desire this means that if you don?t satisfy it you?ll be unhappy. ?Perplexingly, it maybe useful to have many desires that you?re unattached to?and if you accomplish a small number of ?these, rejoice in them, the others: just let them go.

Also by attaching ourselves to a desire we hope to fulfill in the future, we can lead ourselves into a situation where we?re unhappy in the ?here & now? until we achieve this desire sometime in the future. ?It?s important to live in the ?now? take happiness from it and the meditative practice of ?mindfulness? is something that can help (you can ask about this on this part of the Nepal tour).

Perhaps too we need to create simpler desires in the first place that can be more easily attained and surpassed. We often see Asian people with less than ourselves who appear happy; Nepal has an abundance of these. Enjoying the many things we do have, rather than the things we don?t, also helps. ?Here?s a picture of our group on our previous holiday to Nepal. As you can see, ?a very happy bunch, whatever religion!

Category: General, Uncategorized

Holiday to Nepal

Cycling on holiday in Nepal

Cycling on holiday in Nepal

Bring me sunshine! Whilst we grin and bear the wind and rain, here is a picture from our holiday to Nepal last October. ?Here some of the group are whizzing by on old Nepalese bicycles as they tour the birthplace of the Buddha. It’s warm and sunny and the exercise was good after a guided meditation under a sacred tree. That same night the group stayed in a monastery – after sitting in the village with a cold beer . I hope this brings back warm memories of your holiday to Nepal.

Category: General, Uncategorized

Nepal Holiday – Shri

One of our treasured hosts.

One of our treasured hosts.

For all those on our October 2014 holiday to Nepal, please find here a picture of your favourite host to our trip – Shrisana.

Here she is on our visit to the look-out point at Sarankot – with the Annapurna range behind her. Shri misses you all now, and this shot was taken prior to our trek down through the mountains back to Pokhara. Hopefully, this lovely photo of her (her first taste of travelling with us ‘foreigners’) will bring back some happy memories.

 

Category: General, Uncategorized

Our Holiday to Nepal

Here’s our group on our Autumn 2014 holiday to Nepal. Twenty four people from all walks of life and all ages, all thrown together on the adventure. ?We’ve been on rickshaws and elephants, jeeps, dug-out canoes, bicycles and light aircraft around Everest on this trip thus far. ?And we’ve all gelled together as one big family on our colourful holiday in Nepal! Thanks for being such a lovely bunch.

Our holiday to Nepal

Our holiday to Nepal

Category: General, Uncategorized

Dashain festival in Nepal

nepal holidays

Everybody cares in Nepal

Nepal’s version of Christmas is just coming to an end now, the year here is 2071 and it’s the festival of Dashain. ?Like Christmas it’s a great time of feasting and the coming together of families, it lasts over a week. ?There are quite a lot of animal sacrifices over the period, as well as blessings within families and even the anointing of cars and motorcycles – these are decorated with flowers, garlands and red vermilion powder. ? Even the animals have a sense of getting together, here is a picture from a street in Kathmandu. Happy deshain, and happy holiday in Nepal.

Category: General, Uncategorized

Nepalese food, the benefits

Nepalese food

Nepalese food

When it comes to healthy food perhaps Nepalese cuisine has some of the answers. The national dish ‘Dhal Bhat’ can be quite healthy.? The main ingredients are Dhal; a lentil curry and Bhat; meaning rice. It’s the lentils that provide the good news. There are a wide variety in Nepal and like many pulses these provide a good low calorie source of proteins, fibre, vitamins and minerals – they can also lower cholestoral.? So the next time you go for a curry, perhaps try the healthier Nepalese version. On your holiday to Nepal, I am sure you’ll like to try this tasty Nepalese food.

Category: General, Uncategorized

Holiday to Nepal – the dentist

Vaishya Dev is known in tourist books as the God of toothaches here in Nepal and is represented in Kathmandu.

Nepal holiday

Nepal dental treatment

Here it is in an alleyway, in essence a large collection of metal washes nailed to each other at the base of what was once a sacred tree. Hindu mythology, its culture, combined with Buddhism gives Nepal an endless array of festivals and unusual practices that have long disappeared in neighbouring Asian countries.

On a holiday to Nepal, you can get very modern dental treatment (much more cheaply than the West) with European trained dental technicians in very clean, modern clinics. What?s nice, is that dentists also examine your tongue and advise on diet, sleep and other factors. There is an ?interconnectiveness? with treatment, much like Buddhist karma, looking not just at the symptom but also the cause from a lifestyle perspective.

However, traditions still remain, here a boy enters his head into the symbol to relieve toothache. Shamans too also perform ceremonies around toothache patients, dancing with yak tailed sticks and chanting but they are often more expensive than the dentists

Category: General, Uncategorized

Holiday to Nepal

Holiday to Nepal

Holiday Nepal

Thanks to Richard who has updated us with some more photographs from his holiday to Nepal with us last April. As you might imagine a holiday to Nepal is a very colourful one. Already group numbers for our next holiday in October are nearly full. ?Here is quite a nice photograph of a young Nepalese girl he’s taken. With around 70 different castes, a multitude of ethnic groups and a sizable Tibetan community, Nepal really does have a multitude of cultures to photograph. ?Thanks again Richard for your input and I hope everyone enjoys the photos. ? Here’s the link:

https://www.facebook.com/trickygordon/media_set?set=a.10152459575668109.1073741846.589083108&type=1

Category: General, Uncategorized

Miss Nepal, meditation and spiritual holidays

Meditation Holidays

Jharana as Miss Nepal

You might remember a few months ago we confirmed that former Miss Nepal, the lovely Jharana Bajracharja has become a friend and offered to work with Angel Holidays to teach meditation to our travellers. Meditation and spiritual holidays are becoming increasingly popular. Jharana is a celebrity here, and since winning Miss Nepal in 1997 has become a film actress both in Nepal and across the border in Bollywood. In Nepal, outside of the celebrity culture of the West, Jharana walks freely and is unhindered by the press or local people. ?She’s treated as an equal and nothing more. It’s partly due to the removal of the ego and ‘ego-grasping’ as it is termed by Buddhist and Hindu religions; a frowned-upon process whereby we become attached to ‘who we are’ as a opposed to our equal place as part of humanity. ? I wonder why famous people are so revered in the West? Nepal has a high degree of intellectual spirituality; theories about who we are and our position in the world have been developed over thousands of years – even the police force have daily meditations. Here’s a photo of Jharana in all her glory in 1997. ?She can teach meditation and its benefits in the beautiful Pagoda room on the rooftop of our hotel overlooking the city. I wonder how Simon Cowell would react if he could walk freely around London with no one making a fuss of him? Might he suffer from ego-grasping?

Category: General, Uncategorized

Nepalese wedding

In Nepal there is such thing as a ‘wedding season’ ?where there is an abundance of weddings, at least more than usual. Here is one that I was invited too, and as you can see it’s a fun affair. ?Most ceremonies (particularly for Hindu marriages) are a three day event. ?The first day, the bride is collected from her family home; where she usually appears a demure figure among the throngs and processions of the smiling groom’s family who collect her. After rights and rituals, the party begins, and here you’ll see one in full swing. This was a ‘love marriage’ as opposed to the more common arranged ones. What a lovely day!

Nepal wedding ceremony

Relatives dance to celebrate!

Category: General, Uncategorized

Top