A quick trip to Nepal!

We were still on a high from our flight over the Himilayan Mountains & Everest as we arrived in Kathmandu. We jumped in "taxi's" & were off into the crazy traffic to our hotel. Now taxi is a fairly loose term. Ours was a 1961 Toyota Corolla which probably contained more bog than original panels & who's wiring hung down, sadly under the dash board. O-kay......so we were off anyway, all 4 windows down - Nepalese airconditioning! Not far from the airport we got stuck in crawling traffic. Not only did the airconditioning not function too well at 3kms/hour, the smell of the burning clutch peddle was intoxicating. A little further up the road we found ourselves stuck in a dispute between a couple of guys who'd just had a small bingle in the middle of the intersection. The 2 drivers were out of their cars - which were both stopped in the middle of the road - & the situatuion was quickly becoming heated. More & more men arrived until there was a mob of about 30 guys, all standing in the middle of the road shouting, cursing & generally causing chaos. So what does out taxi driver decide to do? Jump out of the car to add his 2 cents worth. So now the guys are kicking the panels on each others cars & I was sure there was gonna be a punch on. All we could do is sit in our taxi, wind up the windows & hope that our driver came back & got us out of there before we died from heat exhaustion. Luckily, after about 20 minutes the police happened to come by & moved everyone on. Pheew, not off to a great start!

Photo: Our beautiful taxi!

Photo: I'm guessing that's not covered by warranty!!


We arrived at the hotel & discovered our first challenge. Nepal faces 3 hour long power cuts, 3 times a day, every day. Hmmmmmm, that meant no airconditoning (it was close to 40 degrees), no lights & worst of all, no WiFi!! The power cuts were scheduled but we soon realised that it was a fairly loose schedule. So we showered in the dark & headed out for some lunch & our first look around the town. We were staying in the "touristy" part of town - Thamel - & had fun shopping the little stalls & trying the fried delicacies that were being prepared on the side of the road (things like samosas & donuts - yum!).

Everything was going ok until the sun went down & it got dark.....really dark. With no power there were no street lights, so it was pitch black walking back to the hotel. Groups of youths hung around on street corners, learing at girls & offering the boys drugs. If Andrew was asked once, he was asked 30 times  - "you want hash, you want drugs??" Coupled with the many young boys sitting on street corners chroming & looking for trouble, we were well & truly out of our comfort zone.

I think that if we hadn't had such an amazing time to Tibet, we may have reacted differently to Nepal but unfortunately neither of us ever found our stride. We both felt like fish out of water & were slightly dreading the next 2 weeks. What were we gonna do if we were too uncomfortable to go out at night.....sit in the hotel in the dark?? So, instead we made the decision to leave early......

You may be thinking - "What a couple of spoilt, cry babies!!" & you may be right but it is our holiday & we'll cry if we want to!! Once the decision had been made & flights had been changed, we both relaxed a little.....though we still didn't go out after dark!!

Photo: Ok, so I have a slight obsession with bottoms......

But we did do stuff during the day. We headed out to see the Swa-something Temple - I can't remember how to spell it but it is affectionately known as the Monkey Temple!! It was completely over run by cheeky monkeys - very cute!

Photo: Oooooh, I is itchy...


We had heard that if you entered the temple through the gate you had to pay 50 rupees to go in, but if you walked up the many, many, steep steps, you got in for free. We arranged a taxi & said to the taxi driver "Steps please??", he smiled & nodded & we thought "bewdy"! Well we arrived at the entrance gate at the top of the mountain, which had about 5 steps up to it & he said, while enthusiastically pointing, "Steps!!". Not quite! So we paid him & made our way on foot back down the mountain & started our climb up the actual steps. What an effort! Luckily the monkeys kept us entertained & after about half an hour of climbing we reached the top.....only to find that our information was about 7 years out of date & it was actually 250 rupees to enter....hmmfff! After all that, we decided not to go in....you could see the temple from the steps & you couldn't actually go inside it, so we saved our rupees!! Oh well, the view from the top was nice & we needed the exercise. Funnily enough, after one of the girls had relented & paid her 250 rupees & gone in, the guard came out of his office & offered us a discount....100 rupees each but we wouldn't get a ticket to keep...if you know what I mean!! I don't think so my corrupt friend!

Photo: This cheeky monkey kept pulling the plastic bag over his head every time I tried to take his photo!!

After all the monkeys & step climbing we had dinner & skulked back to the hotel before all the baddies came out!! Next morning I think Kathmandu decided to punish me for judging it so harshly. I was sick. The kind where the leaving the hotel was not an option. Yuck! The next day, our last, Andrew suffered the same fate. We had really pissed off the gods this time & at this point could not get out of the place quick enough. After pouring half a packet of Imodium down Andrew's throat & strapping him onto his back pack we made a run for it. We checked in at the airport & waited to board. As they called our flight we were extremely excited to find out that we had been upgraded to business class for the one hour flight to Delhi. Seems, at the last minute, the gods forgave us!

We arrived at Delhi airport for our 9 hour stopover & waited.....& waited........& waited! Eventually, at 1am, we were called from the transit lounge for boarding & London was in sight....well, after a brief stop in Frankfurt!

So I can't say that Nepal will make it into the highlights package but it was an experience non the less & I'm sure we will laugh about it......one day!