365

A year on the road and counting.

7pm, in front of KGH

Kathmandu Guest House is a polished-come-chaotic type of place, smack bang in the middle of Thamel, it’s the landmark that everyone knows.
Its glory days as hub of backpacker accommodation are well over, senior citizens and Intrepid Tour groups now seem to dominate, but if you can score one of the handful of $8 rooms available, it’s still a good deal.

KGH secret rooftop that most never find.

Kali Gandaki

“The Kali Gandaki River runs through the deepest valley in the world, between the towering Himalayan giants of Dhaulagiri (8167m) and Annapurna (8092m)..This is one of Nepal’s best wild whitewater rivers.”

And so it was.

Innovation

Solving the age old ‘where to put my big water bottle’ annoyance.

Kathmandu – Pokhara Bus

Even if the 8 hr bus ride did turn into 14 hrs..

7 (nights) in Tibet.

In the travel world, to get where you want to go, sometimes tours are the only option.

There are places that simply don’t allow solo travel, Saudi Arabia is one of those places, Bhutan is one of those places, Tibet is one of those places.

Yak & Yeti

Kathmandu is a long way from the beach, the showers in most guest houses are mis-directed needles of water, and solid blue sky’s show no sign of rain any time soon.

The only real way to get wet is the local swimming pool.
But there isn’t one.

We make our way to the other side of town, out of the backpacker digs and into the 5 star strip.

Gliding past reception and security, navigating through a massive interior, eventually finding what we came for.

Today was the Yak & Yeti. The sun burn was worth it.

Everest Base Camp.

I’m not sure when it was I decided I was going to Mt. Everest, Nepal has never been a must visit for me, and Edmon Hillary was never an idol. More realistically I think in planning for the trip my thought process was something like this (as studies Atlas):
“So I’ll fly into Delhi, then make my way down to Paki.. Shit, Nepal’s right next to India.. Shit Everest is in Nepal.. should do that then”
I brought hiking boots the next day and that was that.

I fly into Lukla (2840m), one of the highest airports in the world. The runway is a strip carved into the side of a mountain. Its also short, real short, as soon as the wheels touch the ground the pilots on the handbrake so he doesn’t concertina the thing into the rock face at the end.

Last year a pilot misjudged the landing and flew straight into the mountain, everyone was killed, the wreckage is in the jungle at the bottom.

Namaste Nepal!

Leaving Melbourne winter and arriving in Kathmandu was something like being slapped around with a hot sweaty dusty doormat, and I really wasnt ready for it.
All of a sudden the 15oz Denim I was wearing seemed totally irrelevant and all I could think about was a shower and stripping down.
Within the first hour I did one of the most stupid things I’ve ever done in the history of traveling. I left my pack in the taxi whilst going in with the taxi’s tout dude to check out a hotel.
I was doing this just to shut him up and eventually as promised take me to the  actual hotel I wanted.
So we’re in side for less than two minutes, come back out and the taxi is gone.
With a bunch of snickering construction workers milling about, the tout dude turns to me in response to my disdain, and says “owe my godt, were dis yaw buhg” it was so comical and surreal I had to stop myself from laughing. But I start to size up which part of his huge fat head I will attack.
After a few heated demands, he was legitimately(?) concerned for my bag and we begin running down the street after this taxi. I wonder how dumb we look to everyone around us, another sucker that fell for that scam? Or what the hell is going on there?
So the run ended up turning into us jumping into another taxi, and him directing in Nepali “follow that taxi!”, again too comical to be real and I start to wonder how I’m going to continue this trip without the contents of that bag.
We eventually catch taxi #1, with my bag still inside, and the whole thing turns out to be a mis-understanding. The taxi driver was new and didnt realize he was suppose to wait when we went into the touts hotel. And the tout (a government employee) was commending me for taking a registered taxi, not some random off the street. And “if dis was India, yaw buhg gone forever, bye bye buhg”.
Lesson learnt! Idiot.