Day 1: Kathmandu, Nepal

RM and I met up with LS yesterday in the Bangkok airport and boarded our four hour flight for Kathmandu. RM and I had been awake for about 25 hours since leaving Jo-burg, while LS was pushing 40 after staying up the entire night before she left Baton Rouge. Fortunately, the flight to Bangkok was relatively empty and we each got our own three seat row in the back; shortly after landing we each stretched out and passed out.

Kathmandu reminds me a lot of Calcutta in India: motorcycles dart between overcrowded rickshaws and rusted-out cabs, 15 sq. foot shops line the crumbling sidewalk, and life - eating, sleeping, working - all seems to happen on the street. Kathmandu is much cleaner than Kolkata and because the primary business here is tourism, as many shops here seem to be devoted to foreigners as the natives. Prices are generally low but beer is as expensive as many places in the first world. For all meals but breakfast, our bar tab is consistently larger than (multiple courses of) food.

(Kathmandu Guest House: $10/night/person)

We were all three up at 4am this morning - Lauren was coping with 11 hours of jet lag while RM and I had just 4. We opted for a walking tour after breakfast to get familiar with the city and give ourselves time to relax and recover from the trip. Like most places in the sub-continent, Kathmandu is extremely busy and the area where we're staying (Thamul) is the center of it all. 90% of the shops here are one of five things: a mountaineering store (full of very convincing North Face and Mountain Hardware rip-offs), a boot-leg CD shop, an internet cafe, a curio shop, or a street dentist.


The weather was beautiful on our first full day; however, we kept our focus on the city and didn't get to see the mountains surrounding the valley until we had dinner on the 8th floor patio of the Helena Restaurant. Weather permitting, after yoga in the morning we'd like to rent mountain bikes to see more of the city and hopefully some of the surrounding city. Kathmandu is only a city of 700,000; however with 9 stories being the tallest building we've seen yet, its most likely pretty spread out.

(young Buddhist monks on our walking tour)

Make sure to check out the new Nepal photo gallery on flickr and please feel free to leave comments.

(advert for free oxygen on the hotel bulletin board)