Hotel Mandap, Thamel, Kathmandu.

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A shared room.

For the first time since my travels began I am in a hotel. A small simple place in the heart of Kathmandu. A bit of a tourist area but I felt that I needed a bit of R & R and having a choice of where to eat is wonderful after the ashram.

When I unpacked I noticed that I had a companion in the wardrobe. A rather large cockroach. Now, I didn’t freak out as I usually would - you get used to all sorts of things in India (apart from spiders!) I tried to bash it with a shoe but it was quicker than me. So I made sure that the door was firmly closed and later went to bed.

At about 12.30.a.m. I heard scratching sounds in my room. I imagined mice scurrying around so had to get up and investigate. The sound was coming from the wardrobe. Can a cockroach make that much noise I wondered. Maybe there was a mouse or a rat in there too. Not being that brave, I decided to call down to reception and 5 minutes later a man appeared with a broom. He looked through the wardrobe, shook out bed covers but found nothing. All this time I was huddled on my bed in P.J.s with a towel wrapped around me for extra decorum, worried that a rat would run out. I thanked him and went back to bed feeling a little uneasy.

Two minutes later it began again. I crept up to the wardrobe. Hanging on the knob I had a pink plastic bag with dirty undies in and I could just make out a dark shape crawling about inside. That rotten cockroach was after my underwear! I gathered up the bag, opened my bedroom door and through the contents into the corridor. There were my undies strewn about on the floor with the cockroach making a hasty retreat. Thank heavens there was no one about. They would have got a nasty shock seeing a crazed blonde woman throwing her laundry out of the room!

Needless to say after that it took a while getting to sleep and guess what? I just spotted his buddy in the wardrobe a few minutes ago!

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