Don’t miss this festival, if you’ve always wanted to see a turban tying competition. Or how about a pageant to find the man with the most impressive moustache? You might even be lucky and catch the winner for a souvenir picture with you. Admire some of the best traditional Rajasthani folk dancers and singers under a moonlight sky, amidst the exotic background of the impressive sand dunes of the Thar desert.

The desert festival is the best opportunity to witness a truly spectacular showcase of traditional Rajasthani culture and taste delicious Rajasthani cuisine. The festival site in the desert can be reached by car or on a camel safari.

If you want to visit Rajasthan, maybe even during the Desert Festival next year, contact us for more information.

In 1933 Kila Raipur Sports Festival was founded as a recreational meet for regional farmers, to come together and test their endurance in the games.

Competitions are held for major Punjabi sports, like cart racing and tug-o-war. It does get quirkier though: Main draw for most foreign visitors is the chance to see people lifting bicycles or pulling cars with their teeth or ears and other stunts, as well as acrobatics. In the evenings, cultural feasts with music and dance until well past midnight are a fantastic show.

What is the weirdest sports discipline you’ve ever heard of?

If you’d like to get a glimpse of Everest in 2012 as well, and maybe meet the charity on their way to the highest peak in the world, contact us.

The gold-plated temple has an annual income of around $340m from donations. 50 – 100,000 pilgrims visit this temple daily, putting a great strain on electricity and other energy ressources. This lead to a re-thinking of where the energy used for the temple complex should come from. Step by step, the temple now goes towards green technologies.

The first step was to install solar dishes on the roof of the huge kitchen, to provide steam to cook around 50,000 kg rice and lentils every day. The dishes move with the sun, to always capture maximum sunlight. This way, around 500 litres of diesel are saved daily.

Taking advantage of the ideal location of the temple, the next step was to install wind turbines on the hillside. These currently create about 7.5 megawatts power. Multiple wind farms are planned, to cover more and eventually all energy needs of the temple. It is hoped that devotees from all over the world will make donations in green technology. Being known as particularly generous devotees, the temple is confident the plea for donations will be a success.

It is hoped that this progressive attitude will be a greater influence to the public than government programmes have been before and the temple actively promotes the use of sustainable energies. Are you doing anything to reduce your carbon footprint?

Here is some more of Linda’s impressive CV:

It was a very informal evening where everyone was encouraged to chip in with questions at any time. Each person was given a handout which we read through, and it wasn’t long before the first question came, “How to say, Where is the toilet?” Undoubtedly a key phrase! And if you find yourself caught short in Nepal, you can ask “Toilet/Charpi kaha cha?” or if you are male there is a special hand signal that any other male will immediately understand, what you have to do is clench your fist and raise your pinky, it really works!

We covered the following topics during the evening and practised pronunciations with the help of Isha, a native Nepali speaker:

All our visitors enjoyed the evening very much, and we tank them for coming along. If you are interested in our upcoming open evenings, keep and eye on our blog!

Every Nepali has his own personal horoscope called Cheena. This is written by an astrologer, who is given the exact time of birth or a baby. He prepares the horoscope by interpreting the position of planets at the very moment of birth, which gives him information about their influence on the person’s life.

The Cheena highlights positive and negative aspects of a particular person’s life, probable achievements and failures. An astrologer can read from it quite accurately what fate has in store for someone. In difficult times Nepali people therefore take their Cheena to an astrologer to ask for advice and act accordingly. They consult their Cheena for the launch of a business, the start of a journey, certain rituals and ceremonies.

The Cheena’s contents become specially important when a couple plans to get married. They will take them to an astrologer to find out if their marriage has a good future. Hindus usually will not marry if their Cheenas do not match.

Religious festivals in Nepal are also governed by astrological readings – astrologers determine the auspicious hours for blessings and other rituals.

The Cheena accompanies every person through their life and when he dies his Cheena will be cremated with him.

Swayambhunath is the oldest and one of the most sacred shrines in Kathmandu valley. Its golden spire has the seeing eyes of Buddha overlooking the valley in all directions. These eyes area a well-known symbol for Nepal. The white dome underneath represents the world. The spire with thirteen tiers symbolizes the way to enlightenment humans have to go, once they freed themselves from the world.

Along dozens of small prayer wheels, there is a nearly 12 feet tall prayer wheel, that needs two people to turn it. The stupa itself is richly decorated with Buddhist symbols. Near the main stupa stands Shantipur, a small, plain temple with fascinating history. According to legend a holy man has been meditating in the vaults of this temple for 1500 years and remains there to help the people of Kathmandu valley when needed.

Watch this fantastic video to travel to Swayambhunath on a virtual 3D journey. Every afternoon, the monks in the monastery at Swayambhunath can be heard chanting. In the early morning, there are many pilgrims and few tourists around the temple, this is the best time to visit to experience living Buddhism at the temple. A visit to Swayambhunath is a highlight of most Nepal tours – why not have a look at ours?

The Sherpa are only a very small group of people in Nepal, totalling about 35,000 people. They mostly live in Central and Eastern Nepal, mainly in the Everest region. Sherpas are not originally from Nepal, but moved there from Eastern Tibet about 500 years ago. As most Tibetan people, Sherpas are well adapted to living at high altitudes.

Being Tibetan, the Sherpas brought Buddhism with them and built many beautiful monasteries in Nepal. Buddhist religion dictates to care for other living creatures, and so Sherpas are extremely warm and helpful people. You will experience their hospitality when travelling through their villages. Not only their religion, but also language and culture are similar to their Tibetan brothers.

Sherpas were not traditionally mountaineering people. Many Himalayan peaks are considered sacred in Buddhism, and climbing them is seen as blasphemy. When the Westerners arrived to conduct the first expeditions about 100 years ago however, the Sherpas embraced mountaineering as part of their culture.

Since 1921, they helped at and led many large mountain expeditions, among others to Everest. The reputation they earned for this now lets them charge high fees for their services, and most Sherpas have made it to relative wealth – they no longer work as porters, but own lodges and trekking agencies.

Would you like to meet all the different people of Nepal? A trekking holiday taking you to many traditional villages will be just the right thing for you! Contact us for more information.