After an uneventful tourist bus ride from Chitwan, we arrived in Kathmandu on Thanksgiving evening. What a change from the lush and peaceful National Park and beautiful Pokhara! We got an overpriced taxi to our chosen guesthouse in Thamel (Souvenir Guest House, a cute place run by a nice family who owned a gorgeous puppy called Michael!) and went for some food in an American bar. Thamel is the tourist centre and accordingly packed full of gift shops, internet cafes and western restaurants and hotels. The streets are filled with litter, taxis, motor bikes, cycle-rickshaws, petrol fumes, people trying to sell tat and drugs and little street kids sniffing glue from plastic bags. Sounds awful, but it's all kind of happening in a non-threatening way and was nowhere near as bad as Delhi. But we hadn't
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