so many days catch up...

Well i have been slacking with the old blog writing, a thousand apologies...

i'm afraid it will just have to be a quick catch up of events, although so much has happened it the past week, but to go into more detail would take an age. So...

15th April: Lazy day simply sitting in the bar of my hostel, the Via Via Cafe - wonderful place in an old Newari building that is more like a home than a hotel, people tend to stay there for months at a time and everyone pitches in with helping to run the place, as i was to find out later, recovering after my trek. I was so tired i didn't quite know what to do wit myself so decided on the real only sensible option and sat and drank gin and ate food until i was sated while chatting to a guy from Belguim who was working there for 5 months.

16th April: Met up with Dhana, my trekking guide, i don't think i realised quite how well we had gotten on and he was really keen to spend some more time together when we got back and to take me to his brothers restaurant, he kindly said that he would take me to the post office to help me send a package home of my cold weather gear that i had for the moutains as i definitely would not be needing it again. So glad he came as i would never have found the office on my own and when we got there it was equally as confusing. Even Dhana had problems trying to decipher where exactly we were meant to be going in order to send a package to the UK. When at last we had found the right counter, the inevitable long wait and confusing circular conversations started which seem inevitable whenever you come up against administration of any kind in India and Nepal.

"madam you must pay 500 Rps custom tax on top of money for package."

"but there is no custom tax" (wanting him to understand, i know this money is going straight in your pocket you annoying corrupt individual)

" yes yes everyone pay this, everyone."

"well i'm not paying it."

" then no package send home, everyone pays this i am telling you"

starting to think i may have been mistaken and that this really was a tax i had to pay i tried once more just incase

"i will pay 250"

"ok, you pay 300"

and thus the deal was set and he got 300 extra rupees that morning.

afterwards i went back to the hotel as the night before i had promised Wouter (the belgium guy) that i would help him with the washing, he had only just started, the management were away and he had no idea what he wa doing. Met him back at the hotel and we struggled down the street with armfuls of dirty sheets to the owners apartment. Once i had given him i quick lesson in how a washing machine works and explained that no you can't really put those red sheets in with the white ones, i got out as soon as i could before i was roped into staying there all day, his poor mother!

17th April: Dhana had said that he would take me sight seeing to the palces that i had not gotten to yet in Kathmandu and met me at the hotel in the morning. Walking around with him was like having a passport into another side of Nepal that i would never have been able to access on my own. First he took me, on the local bus which are impossible to fathom, people just congregate on the pavement and that constitutes a bus stop, then you shout alot of nonsense and eventually the right bus stops and you are forced onto what looks like an already overcrowded vehicle, to his brothers cafe, the usual hole in the wall place that local nepali people eat in. The food was amazing, simple, but so tasty and i got to meet his brother and friend of theirs from their village in the mountains. This friend, R.K., was a quite well known Thanka artist (traditional buddhist art) and has his work in many of the monastries around the Kathmandu valley as well as much being sent overseas particularly to japan and america. Then we went to some places that are on the normal tourist route but Dhana was so informative it changed my experience of them completely. We were going back to the brothers restaurant for dinner and still had some time to kill so decided to visit Kopan Monastry where we could see some of R.K.'s work. Monastries are fast becoming one of my favourite places to visit, this particular one was set in sumptuous, lush green grounds, expertly kept and when we arrived the youngsters were having lessons in the monastry, repeating over and over the mantras that they must learn by heart. there was a slight lull in the monotonous drone which the combinded force of 60 odd voices create when we walked in, and dozens of pairs of young eyes followed us as we walked around while the older monks explained the various things around us.

Dinner was great, the restaurant was really busy with men finishing their days work and coming in for a quick plate of momos, and although the language barrier was a bit of a problem it was wonderful to just sit there and watch life go on around me that otherwise i would never have had a chance to be a part of.

18th April:I had been so interested in the Thanka art of R.K. that the previous night he had offered to take me around his studio so that i could see his work in progress. As he has so many orders to fulfil now he employs 17 men who put the colour to the thankas which R.K. will draw out, R.K. will then be free to inspect all the finished work and add certain touches as he sees fit, although if the work is being painted in real gold then all this will be done by the man himself owing to the huge expense of such materials. Dhana picked me up in the morning and took me to R.K.'s house, the studio is attached, where we had tea before being taken outside to inspect the studio. There were about 10 giant canvasses being completed at the time and we whiled away several hours watching the artists at work while R.K. prowled around pointing out mistakes.

That morning over breakfast i had got talking to a girl called Katie who, it transpired, was volunteering at a care home in Kathmandu called prison assist. As there is no social support in Nepal when family members are sent to jail very often whole families will go with them, particularly if it is a woman then her children will enter the prison with her. This means that often there are whole communities almost in jails as people have no other option but to follow their relations, this is often because those left have no way to support themselves. Prison Assist (PA) take those children whos parents are in jail and look after them. Naturally i was very interested and asked if she would mind if i came with her in the afternoon to spend time with the children and see how such an institution was run.

After the Thanka studio i met Katie and walked into downtown Kathmandu with her to a large shabby looking house. I knew not to expect it to be as i would imagine a similar project to be run in England and had talked to Katie about what conditions were like before hand, but i was still not prepared for what i saw when i got there. About 40 grubby looking, snotty nosed children greeted us and from the start it was a competition for attention. I walked in with katie and no one even came to see who we were, i could have been any one, the entire time i was there i only saw one adult who worked there. It was so thoroughly depressing, there was no one looking after the children and all they wanted was some attention from us.

19th April: I left Kathmandu very sad to be leaving particularly as i had an evil journey to make to get to Delhi to meet Matthew. Got a morning bus which took 10 hours to the border at Sonauli, followed by a local bus on the idian side to Gorakphur to catch the night train to Delhi arriving on the afternoon of the 20th. I have never been so dirty and was covered in some unkown black substance which can only have been the accumulation of nearly two days travelling without washing and being surrounded by dust, dirt and pollution for most of this time.

21st April: the previous night in the hotel i had met a man called alex from poland and we spent a strange night talking about the second world war, the camps in poland and his experiences of the 1980's and what had happened to some of his family, plus talking about the time he had spent at oxford university hanging out with the prince of, sorry i forget, but one of the middle eastern countries. On the 21st we met up again and went to Turklukhabad on the very outskirts of Delhi. Delhi is said to hold 7 cities, the last being the one built by the british, and Turklukhabad was one of these. Now completely in ruins but stunningly beautiful even so, we spent the day scrambling over the decaying walls that once formed the city. We were apprehended by an indian man who appeared to work there, there was no one else in sight, all day we saw not a soul, and were told that the path we were proposing to walk along was not allowed;

but why can't we got this way?

dangerous...land (was his reply)

ok, but it looks safe enough

no no sir, (pointing wildly) cheating man's backside!

i would love to know what he was trying to convey but we followed his advice and decided that we had no desire to see a cheating mans backside and left in a fit of giggles.

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