Day #3 - Shopping - Kathmandu style

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Sitting at home in a parcel is a pair of glacier sunglasses – for the higher altitudes. The parcel didn’t arrive in time, so am off shopping in crazy Kathmandu for a pair. Daylight on the streets of Kathmandu in a taxi is pretty much the same as night time, except instead of dogs everywhere there are people.

The taxi driver drops me off at the main shopping district – which is noticeable in its complete lack of any kind of shop you would recognize in the UK. The driver and I have some kind of conversation in broken English about whether he is going to wait for me or not. I wasn’t expecting that he would, but he seemed to think he was. Waving some notes around seems to end the conversation abruptly and I pay him for his services. Stepping out the taxi into the throng of people, bikes and lots of tiny shops is the start of today’s adventure.

This area of Thamal, as my guide book says, is where you can buy proper trekking gear, not knock off fakes from China – and at Western prices. There are lots of trekking shops with rucksacks, crampons, ice axes and all manner of gear hanging outside them. I go on a hunt for some glacier glasses – the cool wrap around ones that every aspiring “High Altitude Trekker” needs in his kit bag. The ones I find all look like fakes to me. After the sixth or seventh shop I come to conclusion that all the sunglasses are probably fake. I purchase a pair of Oakley Category 3 wrap around glasses, black in colour, and suspect they too are a fake, given the wording on the simple label attached to them has some obvious spelling mistakes. Oh well, at least I will look cool when I go blind. It could have been worse, I could have chosen the mirrored green pair that kept attracting me.

With my mission accomplished, and a quick trip to the money exchange to the rest of my rupees for the trip I head to an Internet Café and enjoy 1980s style web surfing – ie very, very slow.

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Comments

[Leanne]

What glasses??? :/
In true efficeint style, I have promptly returned said glasses for a refund! Sorry