A drastic change

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Hi everyone!

We are now in Nepal and noticing some severe differences from Singapore. The rest of our stay in Singapore was good, and more culturally based. We met a man that writes for Lonely Planet and he took us on a walking tour of the temples and mosques in Little India and Chinatown. It was a wonderful evening, although a long one. Carla and I were still suffering a bit from jet leg, so were happy when told we would be back at the hostel by 8:30pm - also had a early morning flight to catch. Unfortunately we went a little longer. We met up with another American who is working at the consulate in Vietnam - which was really informative because we might meet up with her when we are in Vietnam, and then we met up with Tony, the owner of the hostel and he took us to many historical locations - we had the lovely view from the back of his truck. We didn't get back to hostel until past 11:30 pm, and we basically hit our head to the pillow and were out!

Nepal is quite the culture shock. The airport was breezy and quiet but it seemed like all hell broke loose once we left. We were bombarded by people asking if we wanted a taxi, and we hopped in the closest one - which is so small our bags wouldn't even fit in the truck. We had our knees up to our chests the whole drive, which was probably the most stressful drive I have ever been on. The roads are nuts, and you have to be psyhic to drive here in order not to hit anyone. The poverty here is overwhelming, the dirt/garbage everywhere and the places people were living in were so small and cramped, with water holes sprinkled sporadically. Cows would wander into traffic, a little dazed but not concerned in the least. Sometimes they would stop in the middle of the road and continue to chew whatever cud they already had in their mouth. Goats were chained up in front of shops, people riding motorcyles maybe had a helmet, but not their passenger, and I don't know how people can survive riding bikes here - but they do. The roads are a mangle of cars, buses, motorcyles and bikes, and we have witnessed numerous close calls.

We decided to get out of the city for a few days and go to Chitwan National Park, just slightly north of the Indian Border. There we stayed at modest guest houses, went the the river bank to help bath elephants (I even gave one a massage), then went for and elephant ride in the jungle where we spotted about 10 rhinos, one peacock, and many, many spiders. We were so high up that our faces would catch the spider's web then we would notice them crawling on our legs. I found quite a few spiders on me that day, as well as many other unknown random insects. I don't think I was bit, but there was this one spider that I swatted that had a hard shell on his back that was actually a little spiky - but hey, no harm done. The next morning we got up early and when to the elephant breeding centre (which was informative but too short a visist for my liking - adorable young) and then ended the day with a short walk. It was nice to spend a night away, and have it fairly quiet at night, but we're back in the pollution filled city of Kathmandu. we reserved another two nights at the same hotel we were staying at before, but for some reason they gave our room away so we're staying at Hotel Buddha - not as nice as it sounds. But hopefully we'll be back at the other one tomorrow.

I want to add more, but my time is limited, plus the fact that I have already written this, but the electricity and connections here tend to give out with out notice so it was lost. Hope you are all doing well. I leave for my base camp trek on the 20th, so will post when I get back.

xoxo
Becky

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