Blogs from Kathmandu, Nepal, Asia - page 21

Yesterday I took a decidedly harrowing taxi ride from Bouddha to Jocchne Tole (or Freak Street, as it was called in the 60's and 70's). Taxis here are barely distinguishable from regular beat-up hunks of junk, except that they may say "Taxi" somewhere on them. They're tiny, seat-belt-free (like Thailand!) Noddy cars from the 80's that seem like they're going to fall apart if your luggage is over a certain weight. Anyway, the way it works is, you negotiate the price, throw your stuff in the car, and hope to god(s) the driver actually understood your directions. Mine didn't, he mistook "Jhocchen Street" for "airport" - easy enough mistake, I suppose, so we pulled over to negotiate. I eventually found and pointed it out to him on the map, so we were off. At this point ... read more

Bonjour, je me suis rendu compte que je n'avais pas mis de photos de mon voyage au Népal en octobre 2009.... read more

I woke up around 4:20am on Saturday and got ready for my bus rude to Kathmandu. As I was preparing to leave my room, I heard a low-pitched grunting sound from outside the back window. I froze, casting my mind back to the tiger attack story, although, from my expert experience of watching the Discovery Channel, the sound didn't strike me as tiger-like. As time was ticking by, I decided to make a run for it. It was no longer pitch-black outside, so I knew I'd at least see my attacker as it mauled me to death. I ran out with my backpack on, stopping off on Cindy's porch to leave some travel wash (since she actually has the motivation to do these things, rather than lazily paying for laundry services, as I do), before heading ... read more

So there it was… It was time to say goodbye to Nepal… Not that I wanted to as I really got to love this country and its people. But then new countries waited to be explored and I was actually ready for new adventures as well! Especially the last week was a little bit emotional as I was on my own once again – all my buddies from Annapurna eventually had to go back to their lives, their Nepali adventure finished earlier than mine… The only thing that was keeping me in Kathmandu this last week was my Chinese visa really (it takes 4 days to issue it there usually but due to bank holidays it took a bit longer than expected)... Actually thinking about going on my own to China was a bit of a ... read more

Namaste Hello to everyone from Kathmandu. We've had a great first couple of days out here. Slightly rude awakening this morning as the boss had me up doing 100 press ups and about a million crunchies!! ( gotta keep the beach body in shape don)Journey was relatively uneventful, traffic in the city is interesting, I'll upload a photo of the main road into the city from the airport if I can. Potholes, Cows, dogs, etc. took us until half way through today to work out which side of the road they Drove on. Did you know that some time zones are done in quarter hours? We're currently 4 & 3/4 hrs ahead of uk, weird! Only other point of note on the trip was the goldfish on the baggage carousel at the airport here....... Today's been ... read more