Advertisement
Published: April 5th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Having said my farewells to my Nepal Panorama trip friends I arrived at my meeting point hotel, the Kathmandu Prince, to meet my new travel companions. For the first part of the tour until Delhi there are just 8 of us plus our tour leader Manu. I'm sharing with an Aussie girl called Sammy - one of the first things I found out about her is how much she loves Kathmandu - I find this fascinating as I can't wait to leave the place and head off for India. People are so different. There are 2 more Aussies in the group, honey-moon couple Janine and Carl (good job they didn't do the trekking in the Tea Houses with paper thin walls!). Incidentally we met another honey-moon couple on the Everest flight who said they had only had 4 nights out of 30 in a double bed! What a way to spend a honey moon. The rest of the group consists of sisters Harriet and Charlotte, both confident, bubbly and friendly girls from the UK, Joe who I'd emailed B4 coming out via the Imaginative Traveller forum and not forgetting Matt who has been travelling for months already and just completed two
longer, higher treks than the one I went on (can't wait to see his photos).
After a spot of unpacking we headed off to find somewhere to have lunch. Everyone except Joe had been here quite some time already and it was good to find places that other people could recommend. We spent the afternoon getting to know each other a bit and then Matt took us to the Garden of Dreams. What a surprise - it's a beautifully landscaped garden, restored at huge cost to its former glory. What a haven in this noisy, dusty city. We had tea at the pavillion and boy was it wonderful tea. I wish I'd known about this place before. I couldn't help but feel a slight tinge of guilt having paid to get into this peaceful spot of paradise. The money spent on restoring the garden could have probably been better spent on the majority of poorer Nepalese living in squalid conditions.
Back at the hotel I had a quick briefing from Manu (I'd arrived too late for this before) then we all went off for our first group meal together - to Rum Doodles!! We've already found out some
interesting things about each other the most bizarre of which being that Charlotte and Joe both worked in the same building of Capital One but didn't know each other (or even recognise each other!).
That night and the following morning I was laid low with my first (and hopefully last) bout of horrible diarheah (can't spell!) so spent the time in bed and on the toilet instead of going on the tour to the Stupa and Durbur Square. This was actually pretty good timing as it was just going to be a repeat of my last tour anyway. I eventually felt well enough to venture out so headed off to my favourite interenet cafe (carries on even when the power is down - Kathmandu has timed power cuts around the city posted in the hotels so you at least have some warning). I had just saved a massive long post on this blog (yes I know they are rather lengthy!) when suddenly all the computers went dead - a random power short out, met with huge groans around the room and a smug phew from me!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.038s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0191s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb