Blogs from Thamel, Kathmandu, Nepal, Asia - page 32

Well after a grilling at Dehli airport by customs both me and my luggage made it to Nepal. I knew I had to get a visa but thought that like Sri Lanka it was free so you can imagine how I felt when I arrived to find that I had to pay for it and there were no ATMs in the arrivals hall. Luckily I had $32 with me, the visa was $30, that guardian angel mum and dad gave me really works because otherwise I would still be stuck in the airport hahahahaha. I am staying with 4 other volunteers in a guest house in Thamel and it's really nice. I have a room to myself so there's loads of room for me to put all my stuff, infact I'm going to take a ... read more

We are truly punishing ourselves with the travelling. Our 20 hour government bus from Varanasi to Kathmandu allowed us the leg room of a Ryanair flight which alongside blind side overtaking, full beam headlights and a wild, paan chewing driver, made for some very hairy moments. Not least because we passed three overturned buses on the side of the road (on the Indian side). But we made it! Being in Nepal is so very refreshing. It a dream fulfilled and the place is completely fab. We crossed the border in the early morning and once we were on the other side everything changed. Faces, smells, landscapes and climate. It seems much more oriental than Indian, sanitised and Westernised (good or bad thing?), the first Nepali I saw as we crossed the border was wearing an Arsenal ... read more

Darjeeling - Kathmandu - Tibet Basically Darjeeling was awesome, made some cool new friends with the other volunteers there and had a great relationship with my hosts - Major Wangdi (aka Tom Cruise) and his wife Neema who are both legends!! Really loved teaching at my school and it was actually kinda hard to leave! They put on a bit of a party for me on my last day where the kids performed some dances they had been preparing and the teachers got me pissed! Felt quite bad being a volunteer in a poor school in India, getting drunk on local beer which the kids were bringing in whenever I got low!! Had a great day tho and apparantly I made quite an impression in my few weeks as some of the kids were even crying ... read more

Happy New Year everyone!! This is as bizarre as it gets... who would know that Friday the 13th of April would be new year's eve in Nepal?! I am sitting in a street side Cafe above the main drag in the tourist area having a cheese burger, fries, and Pepsi -- listening to Bruce Cockburn on my sony music player, to drown out the cacophony of sounds... music, honking horns, police whistles, motorcycle exhaust pipes, etc... The last evening I was here was Sat nite 2 weeks ago, and I thought it was pretty busy then... well, depends on who you talk to there is between 2 to 3 million people in the surrounding area -- I think they are all trying to get here at once!! I seem to have a strange habit of arriving ... read more

Strange to be back in smelly, polluted, vibrant, coulourful, friendly, overwhelming but most of all HOT Kathamandu after breathing the thin, clear, almost whiskey like air of the mountains. We reached the Tibet Guest House after a long hot journey and fell into our rooms, exclaiming at the beds, the showers, the relative cleanliness of everything. We all had a bath and a shower each. The next day Si and I went for massages and facials. Quite an experience. Not only did the woman who massaged me have the fingers like iron nails and it was quite the most painful massage I have ever endured, but the really embarrassing thing was that when I stood up from the couch, the oil where I had been lying was grimy and black. I blanched and looked at ... read more