Kathmandu, Nepal

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Kathmandu is quite an interesting and cool place. We of course had a flight at 7:30 which was delayed till 9 but still got us in early. We flew Air India, and let me say this plane was the ghetto express. Not very clean and a bit out of order, but it got us here and safely. We had a ride from the airport to hotel organized by the hotel. We had to wait for one more person to arrive though, so the three of us crammed in an 82 Toyota Corolla and we had our luggage in the trunk and front seat. It was about a half hour ride into town. We saw a bit of everyday life on our way. It is a very dusty town with roads constantly under construction, vegetable vendors on all the streets, very poor but humbling at the same time.

We arrived at the hotel which is very nice. The hotel overlooks the Himalayas has a great garden, the room is very nice, great view and great value at $25 a night. Its about a 10 minute walk from the backpackers chaos which is perfect. The only down side is the walk home at night its a bit down a dark alley.

In fact there are power cuts here all the time. There seems to be two major ones a day and luckily our hotel has a generator so its just a short hick-up with the power.

Everyday life in Kathmandu could throw you back a few decades. People still hand pump water from wells (poorer people at least), other do have plumbing in their homes. Everything here is constantly under construction and its extremely dusty. The food is outstanding. Its spicy but not as saucy as its Indian cousin.

In fact on our first day we found this nice roof top restaurant and had some chicken dumplings, a lentil dish and grilled chicken which was pretty fantastic. Of course accompanied by an Everest Beer. Beer is our drink of choice when traveling abroad, because it is consistent and not outrageous.

We decided to follow the lonely planet walking tour of Kathmandu. I asked our waiter which way to walk and he gave me the directions by pointing. I made one wrong turn and continued to ask for directions but no one knew where they were on a map, so we asked hotel after shop and place after place. No luck, we made it as far as believe it or not the American Embassy and the guard sort of gave us directions to one destination we were trying to hit but Steve's feet got the best of him so we took a taxi to Durbur square. There were temples everywhere, huge pagoda like roofs. People selling vegetables from the sides of the temples. Motor cycles, taxi's, rickshaws, people on foot.. Horns and honking.. It was never ending.. We walked through a few of the temples, decided to stop for a drink and then negotiated a rick shaw back to the hotel. It was a great adventure.

We chilled at the hotel for a while and then deiced to go to a traditional Nepalese place for dinner. We had this fantastic grilled chicken with chillies, and some vege dishes. They poured us this rice wine from a traditional tea like pot, and let me tell you this stuff could wake the dead.

After that we called it a night but it was a first great day in Kathmandu..

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