Leave Approved

We arrived in Kathmandu today. The city (if you can call it that?) is the same busy, crazy maze of congested alleyways, but some of the shops have changed - There are even shops selling DVDs now (at AUD4 a pop!) It is a strangely reassuring yet artificial thing to see other tourists here, especially Asian tourists like ourselves - probably from Australia, Canada, or Korea/Japan.

We are staying in the Hotel Tradition, a “Luxury” hotel - but their idea of luxury certainly is far removed from ours. The room is tiny, the bed is hard and the lights are so dim that you need all of them on to see anything. However there is a small attached bathroom and a teeny Sony TV with cable TV complete with Nat Geo channel, History channel, Star movies etc along with the usual Bollywood delights. Breakfast is included and at the discounted rate of US12 per night, it’s pretty much a steal.

Kathmandu is an enjoyable city to be in if you can tolerate the constant beeping of the cars, trucks, buses and motorbikes as they come up right behind you in the little alleyways that serve both pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic. Just getting round the block needs your constant attention as you play dodgem with moving vehicles and other pedestrians.

The weather is fortunately quite pleasant, averaging about 26 degrees. Right now an evening thunderstorm is threatening to roll in, and the peak hour traffic outside sounds quite brutal. There is an ineffective policeman that stands blowing his whistle at an impossible three way intersection - I am not sure what he achieves apart from adding to the noise pollution.

This  is our last encounter with the internet for the next three weeks - tomorrow we set off to Besi Sahar via a gruelling 7 hour bus trip by “local bus”, and we do not return until April 29th. We shall have plenty of news when we next hop on, so watch this space at the end of the month!