Leaving Gatwick at 9pm Friday evening, we flew via Dubai to Katmandu, arriving 6pm Saturday (1pm English time). Exhaustion was exacerbated by an interminable wait for visas by an allegedly work-to-rule team o bureaucrats pushing cash, passports and paper slips back and forth. They mostly drive on the left in Nepal, with a free-for-all at junctions:vans, pushbikes, motorbikes and rickshaws criss-cross each other via the shortest route. I felt as if we were in a Keystone Cops movie and crossing the road is unnerving. Bikes carry panniers of bananas, yams and other exotic fruits, and overtaking is done blaring the horn and going for it. You are safe if you can leap the gutter and up the steps to the pavement where the sleeping dogs lie (in Katmandu, elsewhere they lie in the roads, and traffic
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