Nepal

Good day to all! :) well, it is not such a good one here...apart from my mood, it is absolutely freezing outside, and after the beautiful sunshine and 15 degrees few days ago, today it had to snow. But not the dreamy-kind of snow..it is the one which barely remains on the ground, yet roads get all frozen...so no biking today =/ and all this pile of mail will have to wait till Monday...argh!
On a brighter note, here comes a FANTASTIC card, which marks Nepal as a country where I have a written and stamped card received from (ok, not just one :P), plus it is a map card!! When Sissel said she'd be visiting Nepal among else, I hoped Ill find a card in my mailbox..but I certainly didnt expect it would be a map card.....I dont think ive even seen a map card from Nepal before! So I was so so so happy to find this one in my mailbox! Just LOVE it! Thank you Sissel for tracking this one down for me!

as it can be seen from the map, here you have the National Parks marked (and I could count, uhmm, 14?!) But dont take my word for it...the shades of green are barely distinguishable one from another (im not excusing myself :P). You have the settlements marked too (hmm, they seem very few in number), and you have the mountain peaks...among which you can see the very famous Mount Everest :)

There have been a few Macedonians too who have conquered this 8,848 metres high peak, where the first one was back in 1989, on 10 May, by Dimitar Ilievski, who was representing the former Yugoslavia back then. Unfortunately, he didnt make it on his way back...on the picture in the link you can see him with the two flags, one of Former Yugoslavia, one of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (as it was known when it was a part of Yugoslavia).
It is really sad how some great achievements have to end....
a short documentary with some highlights from this expedition...in Macedonian though, but it does give you some idea about it

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and here are some fantastic stamps on the back of the card (makes me think again how much I suck with the stamps on my holiday cards :))
the stamp on the very right was issued in 2006 and represents the Golden Jubilee Year of the Nepal-Russia Diplomatic Relations.
the middle one was issued in 2009 and represents the Chhath Festival. while the one at the left is from 2002, from a set of two stamps, entitled "Let us not discriminate between Son and Daughter".  Hmm, well thats a good message, but makes me wonder if they really had such problems, so that they had to  even issue a stamp like that to promote the awareness about it...

thank you dear Sissel!!!

The Jomsom trail, Nepal

Hello my dear friends and readers and welcome to the first update of 2011!! Before I get down to anything, id like to wish you a Happy New Year and hope you had a nice celebration last night, whatever you did, wherever you went to, whomever you were with...mine was really nice for a change....cosy and relaxed with great music and great people. I hope there will be more times like that throughout the year as well.
And today, i gave myself a real day-off, indulged into writing postcards and preparing envelopes to be mailed, eating, sleeping, eating....eating again....dont know why but on 1st of January food tastes different and tastier :)) Yeah, just as an excuse for the amounts of food ive consumed....and then i wonder why clothes dont fit me...ehhh....

Well, without too much ranting, as I told you last time, once 2011 hits the roads, ill try to make some combinations of cards and post ones received in different years, not just the current one as it was mainly the case during 2010.
So here is a card I got in 2009....not written and stamped unfortunately, but thats gonna happen one day too, right?
This card from Nepal shows the Jomsom trail, a favourite route for trekkers, which follows the gorge of the Kali Gandaki River from Jomsom to near Pokhara, central Nepal. Most of the way the trail is narrow and rugged, forcing travellers to share narrow, rocky tracks with hard-pushing donkey caravans. Occasionally the gorge breaks out into an open valley, as here, giving th welcome relief of flat ground.

I dont know if I should be surprised, but too few trekkers on the card...for a place like this, called a favourite, i would certainly expect some more....or at least, my impression that is.

Bouddha Nath, Nepal

My next new country!! 91st to be precise....i think :) Ill organize some kind of a contest when i come to reach my 100th....hopefully it wont slip my mind :)

The Bouddhanath Stupa is one of Nepal's most holy sites for the Buddhist faith. This remarkable structure, by far the largest of its kind in the nation, stands as a giant version of the smaller monuments lining the trails in the mountainous lands of the Sherpa people. No one is certain of the historical origin of the great structure, but it has been converging point for worshiping Buddhists in the region for centuries. It constructed as a monument to the Buddha, with a representation of his "all-seeing eyes" painted on the upper tower to watch the four cardinal compass directions. This tower, capped with a great pyramid, all sits atop a great dome and a base of 3 layers. The site is located a few miles from the city center of Kathmandu, but this outlying section is still bustling with traffic and the din of street merchants. Tourists and faithful monks alike appreciate the hallowed ground that is a respite from the hectic city.

It feels so magnificent indeed! 

Thanks a lot Anastasia for such a remarkable contribution to my collection!