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Published: December 16th 2010
Hello everyone for my final post from Nepal. We (hopefully) should be flying out tomorrow afternoon to Bangkok and the sun!
I heard about the problems at home yesterday, and I'd just like to send my best wishes to Dave in getting better and hope that everyone else is OK back at home. I'm thinking about you all loads.
Right, shockingly smooth back up to Kathmandu from Chitwan, kept entertained and mildly terrified by passing several completely annihilated buses and lorries on the way, including one which had ironically been saved by ploughing straight into an enormous boulder, because it prevented it from flinging itself over a cliff edge!
Greeted in Kath by endless touts who were upset to realise that we knew exactly where we were, that Thamel was only 5 minutes walk away and therefore we wouldn't be taking an extortionate taxi ride with them.
We'd already made a fairly watertight agreement that we'd head to a casino once we got back - in full 'local' clothes as well - so on arrival we threw a few beers back and went on a slightly drunken shopping trip.
There are no photos of us in the
gear unfortunately (debatable whether its unfortunate), but I had yellow vertical striped trousers, a Nepalese flag t-shirt and a Nepalese cap. Barry was similar, but complete with fresh epic moustache shaved in, and green stripey trousers. Brian wore red striped (I think). Ciaran, having travelled India for longer, wore classic Indian long crotch trousers (the crotch is just above ankle height!), an Indian hat and vest top.
After sitting around the guesthouse fire and chilling for a while we headed out to the Shangri-La hotel and casino bringing with us for the ride, Mark and Frankie (English couple I mentioned a few times) and 3 of the guys who work at the guesthouse (who normally would be refused entry into the casino because they are Nepalese (!)).
Greeted by a giant stack of glowing cards at the entrance, it was always going to be a spectacular night out, each of us flashed some cash to gain entry, with admittedly some questionable stares over our attire. In any case, we cashed in some money for chips and made our way to a spare table to await the first free drink. Yup, I said free drink. Should also add, free
buffet, more free drinks and a free stage show complete with dancers.
Few drinks in and everyone was around two roulette tables. Hattless at this point as Nepalese hats were not permitted (who the f**k knows why). Mark and Frankie were soon out being inexperienced, pretty drunk and not cashing in their initial chips for smaller ones!
The Nepali lads, given 100 rupees each did exactly the same, and went down to watch the show, enjoying free food and beautiful girls dancing and miming to low quality Nepali/Indian pop songs. Taking breaks from the table (to stop me from going out too soon) I joined them chilling out for a while and sponging up a few more rum and cokes.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Frankie and Mark left and Ciaran was getting increasingly merry. Due to the hassle of managing to get free drinks from the waiters, he's resorted to ordering two or three at a time and then drinking them rapidly. This was great for any of us nearby who could happily nab one as well.
Then the chicken tikka was ordered. Just to test his luck, instead of eating from the buffet Ciaran
ordered the meal....
After going back again to watch the dancing girls (I'm not ashamed, I'd been in the mountains! Plus they were all dressed repectfully, it wasn't a sleazy place!) and lounge in the comfy chairs. Ciaran, now very drunk, wandered towards to toilets which are right next to the stage, whilst a single Nepali girl dancing and mined to another terrible song. In his giant crotchless trousers, Ciaran took a step up onto the stage. Security turned and panicked and began to think about moving;. Unnecessary though, as Ciaran turned, grabbed the bottom of the epic crotch and wiggled stupidly towards everyone watching. The security, the Nepali guys and myself pissed ourselves laughing until he came back out of the bathroom. At the point the stage was empty and he considering climbing up, only to get in the way of the 5-6 guys coming on stage to dance.
All nicely merry now, Ciaran a fair amount of money down. Gareth down a bit, Brian kicking ass and myself down about half. I wandered downstairs to try a slot machine, lost a few hundred rupees rapidly, but did befriend a waiter who kept bringing me extra drinks
without hassle for the rest of the night!
On returning upstairs, Ciaran was really quite hammered when the Chicken Tikka (after 8-9 requests) finally turned up! Tasted spectacular, but probably had at least a small amount of spit in it. The drunken cheer on arrival was pretty mighty as well. A short while later, Ciaran was doing better (money wise), Barry was in profit, I lost spectacularly from ridiculous bad luck 3 rounds in a row and Brian had doubled his money. It was around this point that Ciaran first started comically threatening people and things if he didn't win and cheering even louder when he did. This included a cop from Delhi, who was accused of throwing away all of his hard earned bribe money in a casino. This didn't go down great. The Nepali guys had left, having been kicked out for not spending money (although they had definitely had a great night, free food, girls and drink! They earn virtually nothing so really appreciated the night). As for me, I had taken to sitting with 3 random Indian guys where upon (as usual), the one who wanted to talk most of all, was the one who
spoke the least English. I was beautifully drunkenly amused though when he managed to tell me his friend was an impressionist and started making random animal sounds at me!
A while later, there was a rumbling going down at the table. Ciaran was being, ahem, removed from the premises. We all joined to ease things a little and left together. There is a picture of Ciaran at the end of the night on facebook. Hopefully he won't be too upset!
Next day was uneventful not suprisingly, though me and Ciaran arranged the trip to the Last Resort.
Up stupidly early to set off for rafting, the bus turned up an hour late to our disgust (but not suprise). Eventually we arrived at the side of the Bhote Khosi, a few hours north of Kathmandu, where we learned that our bus now needed to drive on to pick up people from the Last Resort to bring them to the rafting also and we had the pleasure of setting up all 3 giant rafts.
Being American (or probably more importantly, thanks to being a bunch of politic students), the people who were to join us as well were
2 hours late due to fannying around and I personally passed the time waiting lying on a big rock in the river listening to Bob Dylan.
5 of us in our raft, myself front left, Ciaran next to me. Barry left side of second row with an Indian guy next to him and his wife behind Gareth. The guide, Sam (a Nepali Sam!) at the rear steering.
At one point we got stuck on a rock and all had to climb out onto the thing and pull the boat around it by rope (except the girl, she stayed in) and jump back in to carry on. Other times we got stuck, we had the pleasure of comically bouncing up and down to free our craft from its rocky foe.
After a few hours and much soakings later (including water fights with the other 2 rafts), we finished and took the drive up to the Last Resort (just the name of the companies accomodation village). To enter the place, you have to cross quite a bridge, the 160m bungee jump bridge, highest in all of Asia and 3rd highest in the world. Above a craggy, rocky, river. I'll
be honest, it was brown trousers time.
After asking about the bungee however, we were told we couldn't do it. Thanks to the lousy politicians, we'd arrived 3 hours late and it was closed for the day. We asked about the following day, but they flatly refused to open it as there were only 5 of us willing to do it and not the minimum 6!
After a wander around the resort we parked in for the night, awaiting canyoning the next day.
Canyoning started nice and early (for those who don't know, it is the name given to the sport of traversing canyons through abseiling down waterfalls, sliding, swimming, climbing and some falling over. Myself, Ciaran, Gareth, Ali, Carla (couple of Oz girls, who should be uploading photos of the day), Marcel and Juila (a German couple) heading off to the falls in wet suits.
We went down 7 waterfalls, third was most impressive as you got slightly battered from a waterfall halfway down and got quite slippy, but with the exception of a couple of early slips (cough Gareth), everyone completed all without too much trouble, including the final one of 45m.
All
agreed after that whilst great fun, both rafting and canyoning would be much much better during the wetter season in April/May when water levels are higher.
Again thanks to the stinking politicians, we were left waiting at Last Resort for several hours whilst they finished their frankly boring sounding few hour trek up a hill from which you can see Tibet.
En-route home to Kathmandu, we stopped at a service area that painfully seemed to consist only of foul looking mini-fish stalls. That and possibly the biggest goat in all of the world! Ali and I met a cop who allowed us to climb onto the roof of the police station to take a photo or 3 of the mighty creature. Good times!
With Brian and Ciaran leaving for different countries the next morning, we made a good night of drinking and eating more fat steak at K-Too in Thamel. Brian ceremonially burned his stick which had survived the trek and all the time since. Shamefully, this was not before he stood on a staircase in the guesthouse whilst Gareth video'd him being Gandalf and informing all that "You shall not PASS!!!!"
Spend a day doing
nothing and recovering before deciding that we need to be pro-active and wandered to Pashputinath. Here is the Holiest Hindu temple in Nepal and where the main cremation ghats are. I can't be arsed to write about the place here, because the pictures and captions on facebook willl do it all far more justice. Followed this with a walk to Bodnath, home to one of the worlds largest stupas, endless monastaries and general tibetan monks and pilgrim folk from all over the world.
Spent far too much time the next few days trying to find my wallet, which disappeared in the garden of our guesthouse and trying to move our flights forward. So much so, that I have nothing to report for the past few days other than we're flying out to Bangkok tomorrow afternoon with a bit of luck and hopefully my new cards will arrive at the UK embassy in Bangkok for me!
Next plans are a week in Bangkok whilst my cards turn up and whilst Barry's Chinese visa is sorted and then we are off to Cambodia for a couple of weeks of adventure!
Going to be sad to leave Nepal, but we
have definitely done all that we planned to do (with the exception of the bungee which wasn't our fault in the end!) and hopefully Thailand will be just as interesting, although hopefully less wallet busting (going to live off street food!)
Hope all is way and everyone is enjoying lazy snow days!
Will write again in Thailand!
xxx
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