We had gotten our luggage, laptops, and climbing gear back the day before and headed out to try a second time to go climbing in Nagarjun Forest. We caught a taxi to the “Lower gates of Nagarjun” for about 300 rupees from Thamel District.
We paid our entrance fee of about 200 rupees each and headed in with our little description at about 9 am. We had believed it was only about 0.5 km down the road from the gates and headed down the road to a put below a nice cliff of limestone and hiked up and checked it out. Not it. Hum. We wondered around for about another 15 minutes and tried to ask around where it was at but no one could help. Then we walked back out to the gates where the was the ticket station and a posted military guards. We asked there and after a few tries one guy tried to help us. He pointed at a location on the map above near Rani Ban. I realized this was much further than we had hiked as it was well past a hairpin in the trail and we had only hiked mostly southwest.
We set off again determined to hike until we were out of time and had to turn around. It was now 10:40 and we had told Jirel we would be back at 2 pm to go out. We hiked and for over an hour from the gates and found the climbing spot around noon. It was a nice little place with good bolts and short climbs. It was kind of funny all the routes had a green circle with a number painted below it.
We quickly set to trying the climbs on the most interesting features we found. We started on number 8; it was about 5.10b.
Then we got on number 9; about 5.10a. It was now 1 o’clock and there was no way we were going to make it to met Jirel on time. Anja shockingly was willing to leave the climbing and go met him but I wasn’t. After all the effort to get here I wanted to finish out of climbing day. Luckily our cell phone worked here and I called him and told him we were not going to be on time but should be able to meet up around 3:30 pm.
Anja then tried number 13 which we thought had a section of black rock. It turned out the black rock wasn’t back it was covered in these strange nats and as soon as you touched it you had nats in your eyes, mouth, and hair. Anja moved over and climbed route 12 instead; about 5.8.
I then headed up route 14 which looked like it might go through more nats but I was able to dodge them but near the top there was a huge hornet’s nest so I traversed right and found the bolts of route 15 within reach and finished up there. About 5.9.
We then finished off the day on route 10. It was fairly straightforward climbing at about 5.9. It was now 2 pm and we would still need to hurry out to make it to met Jirel at 3:30 pm.
Heading out we saw this woman harvesting some sort of leaves or plant, we assume illegally as she ran down the hill and jumped a stone wall.
We hurried out the trail/road to where the taxi had dropped us. We hiked down the road and found a taxi before we made town.
We got back to our hotel, called Jirel and caught up with him. He suggested we head over to the old town. Anja was excited and wanted to go here. We went to Patan Durbar Square.
It was a neat place, very busy, old, and very interesting sculptures.
Really cool wood carvings underneath roofs.
Jirel and his friend
For dinner guess where we went? Yep, back to the tongba place!
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