Back to the Modern World

After travelling around India and eventually being able to travel round Nepal, there was quite a big contrast between the countries. The people for one roll a lot different in Nepal than India, and Nepal seems more Tibetan than Indian with it's everyday life and culture; probably because of the Himalayas.
The only similarities the countries have is they both serve Indian food and have no electricity for the better part of each day! So far, we have only stayed in 2 places where there is constant electricity, these being in big Cities like Delhi and Mumbai; everywhere else has a maximum 12hours of electricity per day.
Another similarity is that anywhere outside the big cities don't have mains water, they have a well or a pump tap which they cart to and fro with empty and full water bottles.



The cities in India like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore are all similar to those Cities we've visited in our previous trip round Southeast Asia such as Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh whereby they are all under construction for new western high rise buildings and all are pure and utter chaos whether its with motorbikes or people!!
Kathmandu gives you a different feel, although you're in the capital city you still feel like you're in a rural area.
The people here are a lot more laid back, than in India where you get hassled pretty much non-stop (we found out it's not rude to ignore them so it died down for a bit when we started that!) but you do get used to it, and after a few weeks you don't notifce it as much, to when you first arrive.
With india, we found that the majority of people are really nice but there was a certain type that you had to watch out for; if people talk to you and seem almost too friendly, they're either gay or want something. They'll pretend they dont and then try and charge you once you've taken it (e.g. a guy on our boat in Varanasi took a lotus flower to put in the river because the man said it was free, then he set it off in the water and he was asking for money!) or they are trying to fleece you into visiting their shop!

In Nepal they are friendly and want to help you out, if we're walking round looking lost, they'll come over and help us out. Everywhere you walk, people call out "namaste" to us and want a little chinwag.
With it's mini villages or tibetan communities within walking distance from the main city you could get away from all the chaos for half a day, whereas if you wanted to get away from the chaos in Delhi etc, you would have to get a local bus (if squeezing 10,000,000 people on a tiny minibus, with a mixed smell of fumes and BO is how you like it) out of the city!
Although you get a rural feel, that's not to say there is no chaos (like Vientiane). The traffic in Kathmandu (once the strike finished) however was a different story so much that we got a face mask (without looking like a lemon) to walk around in! Crossing the road is an art over here, so we used our tactic from SE Asia where we follow the locals and cross when they cross...a few near misses and getting clipped by the ridiculous amount of stuff they try and carry on their mopeds, we had made it to the other side!

The transport works in India's favour though! I'll give them credit for that! Although some of our train journeys were a bit of a nightmare, it was mainly our fault for trying to get away with having the wrong tickets and hope the instructor had some "compassion" to let us off. The trains were only the odd hour late with their arrivals, you got a bed which was relatively comfortable, which converts into a chair in the day for a somewhat comfy ride. You could also get a train to almost anywhere which was handy especially when we changed our plans and decided we'd go from Varanasi across to the other side at Mumbai.




The public transport in Nepal, was a little bit different! The little buses were ok, but when it came to the 6-7 hour bus rides to and from places, the buses were rickety old things! sounding like they weren't going to make it half the time. We had a hard seat, 9 times out of the 10 the seat recliner wouldn't work so you have to sit upright on a hard as nails seat, whilst the Nepali guy in front of you had a seat where the recliner seemed not only to work but to work too well! His head was almost in my lap!
The Buses had no suspension, although you're sitting high up, you feel every stone we drove over and it feels like its going to tip the bus....Not to mention the windy mountain roads! On our way back from Chitwan we saw a lot of crashes! A lorry had gone into someone's house on the mountain cliff! and another bus had flipped onto its back!Overtaking on hairpin bends is not the cleverest idea unless you had a deathwish...but we kept doing it, every corner when we got behind a lorry!
Chitwan failed to have any sturdy houses not to mention rickshaws, tuk-tuks or taxis and instead used horse and cart, ox-carts or elephants to get around. The houses were made out of mud and bamboo! The horse and cart ride was an experience! the bags are up at the front with the driver facing the horse whilst me and Sarah were tucked in the back of the carriage facing the floor! any slight bumps or hills and we would have been straight out of the back face down on the track!





Kathmandu seems a lot poorer than most cities we've been to, where there is no sign of any western style buildings undergoing constructions or even planning, all streets are little back lanes with the front of everyone's house becoming a mini shop in the day, and a home at night. Whether it sells cooking utensils, or chopped up pieces of meat (Sarah saw a woman throw a pigs head on the table the other day for her husband to start chopping up, so I'm keeping off meat at the moment!) to massive sacks of chillis!
India seems to have a reputation for being dirty and yeah Delhi is dirty...so are big cities in any country. You also ask yourself do you really go to India expecting it to be all squeaky clean?do you travel to the less developed world and expect it to be all spotless? If we wanted to visit really clean places, we'd stay at home. One thing we did notice was how people think India is all disgustingly dirty etc, but in comparison to Nepal, we have seen a lot worse in Kathmandu (some little kids playing with dead rats in the sewage gutters at the side of the road!)




The prices for alcoholic beverages in Nepal was ridiculous! You can get a bottle of local wine for 60p, and a barrel of tongba (Tibetan beer) for 50p!! that won Nepal over right from the word go!!
Although, we thought we were getting wine and beer when we ordered 'a bottle of local wine' and a 'tongba'....how wrong could we be.
The wine was served in a used beer bottle which they poured into our empty water bottle! We had a smell and it smelt like vodka!...asking the guy what was in the wine he replied 'a little bit of wine, and a lot of vodka...very strong'...it made tesco value vodka smell like smirnoff!! but 75cl's worth for 60p!! BARGAINS!

On the menu tongba (Tibetan beer) was under the 'liquor' section and not the 'beer' section....thinking thats a bit strange he walks out with a massive flask of boiling water and a mini wooden barrel (about 500ml) full of millet :S some tiny seeds. You pour the hot water in and leave it for a few minutes before you drink.You do this 4 times....each time you do it it gets stronger and stronger in the alcoholic content!...This tasted far from beer, it started off tasting like Mulled wine and after the 2nd refill it started to taste really strong! I felt fine, then I stood up!! Definately a winner!! Apparently its used like we use brandy in england, in the winter, to warm the ol' cockels!.



India had it's own honey bee brandy which was £1.50 for a massive litre bottle which was a good contender, and I never thought I'd say Honey bee could be beaten as it was that good! but it has to take demotion to 2nd place I'm afraid...

So far 2 countries down, and we loved them both, how India had everything you could need and just as you thought you had seen it all, you moved to the next place and it was completely different, and then moving into the mountainous scene of Nepal - the country with the live goddess, the country with so many monkeys they're like vermin, with the locals spending most of their day with a catapult firing nuts at them!
One things for sure, we're going to miss paying £2-£3 (between us) every night for a room!!!
...nevertheless we're looking forward to meeting our Hong Kong friends from disney finally! who have promised to and show us around the Hong Kong so it should be good!!

Chitwan

So after a long, hot and very bumpy bus ride to Chitwan, taking 7hours on a dirt track consisting of rocks and stones: wide enough for one veichle only, we arrived to be greeted by yet more pesky taxi drivers trying to persuade us to go to their hotel. I straight away spotted the Gaida Lodge sign and headed towards the guy, saying how much are your rooms. After he replied 300...I said "Dom we are staying here". I was happy at how quick and how stress free this was...unlike Pokhara!! So we loaded our bags into the jeep and set off to the lodge. After settling in, we were told we were getting a free 'nature walk' around Chitwan by the guy who met us at the bus park...we thought ahh cool!!...So 4:30pm came and we were met by Mr Wildlife himself...he was sporting some binoculas and a "Birds of Nepal" book...it was...yes....a bird watching walk!! hahaha!! We thought this was rather funny and we were very much up for it, well I did, I thought the times when Rach and I used to birdwatch outside my bedroom window would finally pay off. He seemed a cool guy and showed us the Elephant stables and Thaura huts, which were built out of mud and sticks. A small dog was following us and when we asked if it was his, he casually replied "No...but the dogs know me round here!!"...Hmm...Cool!! We reached the fields and were seperated from the jungle by a small river, the bird watching began. He was showing us the sand martins, purple herons, red whiskered bulbuls, cuckoos, woodpeckers (Dom spotted that one) and the crested serpant eagles...he gave us each the chance to get a closer look through his bino-clas...(he pronounced it that way)...although only one eye worked, but we were able to borrow his telescope if we wanted to take bird watching to the next level!!! We thought some new bird had been discovered when Mr Wildlife fell over trying to get a glimpse of this "amazing" bird...we were also excited at the thought of what bird we might have seen...we enquired..."What was that?"...he replied, in a heap on the floor, "Ahh that was a pigeon"...we were a little dissapointed to say the least. This bird watching mularkey turned into a pretty awesome adventure after we had seen a wild elephant crossing the river. Next thing we know, Mr Wildlife and I spotted two wild rhinos across the river about 15yards from us. Mr Wildlife was soooooo amazed, he wanted pictures...for his website (which didnt exist yet). He wasnt interested in taking pictures for us...it was all about him and his webpage!! One moment later, he was running towards the rhinos...flip flops off...shorts hiked up...bird book on the floor...crossing the river, for a "closer" look. He was up the cliff on the opposite side to us, he must have been about 10cm away from the rhinos head, he had his phone out snapping away. It was hilarious, he definatley wasn't concerned with saftey, eventhough he hid everytime the rhino looked up.

A few minutes later we bumped into fellow bird watchers, who had also spotted the rhinos...Jon and Eliza!! An Indian couple, who were teachers, he was a headmaster who had retired and she was a teacher...just a normal teacher, as Jon kept reminding us! He was very enthusiastic and wanted a picture with us after 2minutes of introudicing himself. His video camera was rolling the whole time...he got his guide to film us getting introduced to Jon and Eliza. This video, we later found out, was heading to the Discovery Channel...Jon must have thought the amateur video would have been good enough.

Our bird watching walk ended with us watching the sunset over the river. It was amazing and so peaceful. We could get used to this all too easily.





Day two, we headed to the river to bathe with the elephants. We got escorted down by another wildlife fanatic from our lodge, who imitated bird noises for us, and attempted to point them out, although half the time they had flown off but he hadnt noticed. He was a cool guy, Dom had a connection with him after he shard his love for football...bless!! Once at the river was got straight on the elephant...Pooja....she was sooo big, she was amazing. The guy from the lodge offered to take some pictures for us...good job he came to show us the way!! After being drenched in water and tipped off it was time up. I managed to squeeze in another go before we left though.

Day three was a packed day for us. We had a elephant safari in the morning and a jeep safari in the afternoon, all through the jungle and across the river. Our elephant safari was a 7:30am start, we set off for our 2 hour trek. We were deep in the jungle getting battered by branches and leaves, covered in spiders and bugs...and huge massive red stick insect type things...our elephant made her own pathway half the time. She generally ate her way through the leaves and trees for us to get through!! After being dragged through one rather large tree Dom's flip flop fell off, as we couldnt really stop and get off...well I wouldnt of incase a tiger ate us, we told our driver, who didnt speak English. He grunted a little and next thing our elephant had picked up the flip flop with her trunk and lifted it up to us. Pretty cool. We saw loads of wildlife...monkeys and elephants, deer and pigs and loads of different birds. We didnt manage to spot a sloth bear or a tiger though. Before we knew it we were on our way back and our ride was over :-(

After a quick lunch, we were back heading to the river, ready for our jeep safari which would last 4hours!!!! It was so hot and we had no water. Our hotel friend told us to make sure we didnt sit at the back, as this was the place you got covered in dust...we literally power walked our way to the front of the jeep...it was like a race, and just at the end as we were about to get on, we got overtaken by everyone else (I dont know how this happened) who got the good seats and I got the back!!!...I thought surely I cant get that covered in dust, we were going through the jungle...its grass!!...wrong...1hour into it, I was caked in dust. My whole back was covered and I now looked a slightly darker shade of brown. We took so many pictures and saw five rhinos, more monkeys and more deer and more different types of birds. We were all detirmed to see a tiger, but it didnt happen, which was a shame. Our jeep safari ended and it was great to have been able to go through the jungle both on an elephant and on the back of a jeep.

Flying with the Eagles

After settling in and making ourselves at home in our rather luxury hotel (compared to what we've been used to) we decided to go to Devi's Falls on our way to the World Peace Pagoda on top of the mountain overlooking the Phewa Lake.
Devi's Falls was a waterfall which went underground a bit like the one in Hampi, but the part that was not underground was pretty impressive. Although after hearing and reading that it was in a cave and very eerie we were expecting somethiing a little bit more than what we got...who were we kiddin' though, with an entrance fee of 20Rps it was never gonna be anything unbelievable. Still we had been an seen and it was on the way so we were glad we had gone. Well at this point we thought it was on the way, until it turned out that the walk to the Pagoda that we had read saying was a 20min walk turned into a 2hour hike...3km all uphill! and it was boiling...and to top things off we were climbing a mountain with me in my converse and Sarah in her primark pumps, which were too small!...With a bottle of water which by the time we wanted to drink, it was hot!
Nevertheless we carried on. We had misread it, and the walk which takes you to the Pagoda from the waterfall was the 'scenic route' and yeah it was estimated as a 2hour walk...oops
Sarah was not best pleased, with her feet in agony but we stuck to our guns and made it to the top!! Then someone perked up a bit!! very happy that they had made it to the top!...the views were amazing, on a ridge of a mountain. 1 way you look over the City and the surrounding mountains, the otherside you see the massive Phewa Lake and lakeside.





After we had spent a while looking at the pagoda and taking in the views etc, we made for our way back down!...This was worse than going uphill, as we thought we'd go a different way - through the forest and then catch a rowing boat across the lake back to lakeside (where our hotel was). Basically a half made path down the side of the mountain! Pretty steep! getting down only took us about an hour and then we got to chill out as a guy rowed us across the lake.
We headed straight back to the hotel and put our flip-flops back on...Sarah mumbling to herself how she 'hates trekking' and shes going to write on her pumps 'I hate trekking in too small shoes when its hot'...that is still yet to happen though so I think we may just get one more wear out of them!





The next day we had arranged with a taxi to pick us up at 4.45am to take us up to the Sarangkot viewpoint to see the sunrise over the Annapurna mountains..This meant getting up at silly o clock...4.15am - ridiculous but we managed it. and although the driver was a bit of a head case, we were literally on the edge of mountains and he was flying!....that's put another contender for who the Stig might be.
Watching the sun come up was amazing! the view of the mountains was great and as the sun slowly rised, the tip of each mountain slowly got covered with cloud. We were joined by 3 Americans but Sarah swore blind that they were Irish...1 of which was fairly large of which Sarah instantly thought 'I bet she snores'...bless her. They did keep taking pictures where they would 'pose' right in front of our view which was nice.
After we had a cup of chai and were happy with our snaps, we got back in our taxi to go back to our hotel, where we went straight back to sleep for a few hours..That trip pretty much made us knackered for the whole day so we thought we'd just chill out...and shopping, again getting nothing...APART from booking my paragliding flight for the following morning.

That morning came and it was strange, i wasn't nervous at all I just wanted to get up there and do it...As we drove up a mountain in a jeep, they still hadn't told us what we need to do for take off and landing, instead decided to tell us just as we were actually taking off!..sure.
As he strapped me up with my harnass and put my little red helmet on (what a lemon!) it was like I was a kid again where you get dressed by your mother! But we got all set up and he just told me to run off the edge of the mountain!!
With a bit of luck we started to rise instead of fall, and I could sit back in my luxury seat! On the back of my harnass was a big seat so that when I got in the seat position I had an armchair to kick back into! Camera in 1 hand as I got a panoramic view of the whole Pokhara Valley...the Annapurnas to my left and the Phew Lake to my right.
We were flying along with these massive eagles just above from us. I could actually have some idea how it felt to be a bird for a while!...it was better than I could've imagined







I was having a moment up there!! Sarah had had one when we were rowing on the lake and now I was having one when i was up in the sky struggling to take it all in, it suddenly hit me, realising where I was; In Nepal amongst snowcapped mountains... paragliding, living the dream!...I thought working in M&S for 2 years was living the dream but this had raised the stakes a bit!
I thought this guy (my pilot) has the best job in the world, doing this everyday...
Then we were coming into land where we landed next to the lake and again, he told me to slide out of my seat, so i was prevented from falling out by a few clips, if this was in India I would have fallen! the clips wouldn't be working or something but I put my faith in this guy and we landed safely! My pilot turned round to me and said "during the flight I looked around at you and I could see you were having a moment" even he could tell!....we left all the equipment on the floor and these little kids ran over sorting it all out....I'm glad I found this out after i had done it than before, knowing that 2 little kids not much older than about 7years old had sorted our parachute out!




Once the others landed (2 Brazilian girls) we went to a restaurant for a drink while the jeep made its way to pick us up. These 2 Brazilian girls had MASSIVE Cameras and numerous lenses and luckily took some pictures of me before, during and after my flight offering to send me them via email! :-).

The Road To Pokhara

Having walked 4km out of Kathmandu to Patan where we paid an entry fee to it's Durbar Square which didn't actually have an entrance and confused us, but was a nice chilled out little village to walk around after the, now chaos (from the running traffic) of Kathmandu; Also having visited the Swayambhunath stupa on top of a hill looking over the whole of the Kathmandu Valley full of Tibetan refugees and monkeys, we thought this was impressive until, we caught a local bus from Thamel to Bouddha (after hearing the guy hanging out of the bus shout something that sounded a bit like Bouddha, we put our arm up and quickly jumped onboard.) After about half an hour, we were still on the bus, and we started to wonder whether we were actually heading the right way!! a few minutes later the guy (he had a rats tail!!...yess, the rave in Nepal) told Sarah this was our stop so off we got...50p for both of us...can't be bad!...Bouddha wasn't a very big village, all based around the massive stupa in the middle, 43m high and 1Hectare in width (Sarah quoting the free booklet we got on entrance,which she now informs me she has read twice as she was ill. She had been up all night being sick in all fairness and I did kind of drag her there...I confess :-p).
Bouddha was in the centre of a Tibetan community in a round courtyard full of nik-nak shops (not the crisps...if only)...selling all tibetan handicrafts and tibetan prayer flags hung everywhere, where ever they could hang them, they were there!
After visiting this we felt we were ready to move on from Kathmandu and move on to Pokhara before the strikes, knowing our luck started again and we would be stranded in Kathmandu.

The 7 hour bus journey was truly spectacular! (I don't like to use this word often but I feel it is appropriate when describing it) sprialling up and down the mountains as we leave the Kathmandu Valley, following the river, where the locals had built rope bridges across the river to get to the otherside, rice paddies all layered down the side of the mountains, all their houses made of any materials they could find, with massive rocks on top of the roof preventing the roof panels from sliding off. Loads of cafes and shops on the side of the road, literally on the edge of a cliff but somehow they were sturdy!..One side of us was a 500m drop off a cliff face into the white water in the river, and the other side was a huge rock face of the mountain. The mountains went on forever and the landscape was amazing!
Although this was all specatacular!....the ride itself wasn't....the bus was a bit rickety..the brakes sounded like they had given up on the first corner! our driver was overtaking everything and anything on these tiny roads with hairpin bends every 2 minutes!...half the time the road was only wide enough for 1 vehicle so we had to wait for lorries to come past before we could carry on...We were both wanting to sleep but scared we may miss something!



After our scenic bus ride we were greeted or if it happened in England it would be referred to as 'mobbed' by atleast 6 taxi drivers...one putting on a dreadful and painful Australian accent, surrounding us trying to get us to go to their special guesthouse...This went in our favour as we could pick and choose, name our price and if they couldn't do it, we had 5+ more backup options! luckily the guy with the bad Aussie accent had stopped it by now and agreed to our price...he even promised it to us there and then!...£3 a night! HOT WATER SHOWER!! and now I can officially say it has been the best! we feel like we are living like royalty...our bargaining has now reached a new level!...we are experienced!!haha
The only downfall is we aren't allowed to tell anybody the price we are paying! not even other travellers, people in the hotel...staff or guests!....he told us it was his guesthouse but we are still yet to see him again since!

Kathmandu

After 45 days in India...a little more than we had originally planned, it was time for us to leave not only for another country but also our 2 fellow travellers who we had spent the last 3 weeks with!
It was definately one of our best decisions to keep moving south...if not just for the houseboat, but also Hampi, the train adventures further south as well as Kochi.
While we had booked our plane journey to Kathmandu, Katrina and Rachel had their flights back to Canada ready, so the last few days we spent relaxing and preparing for our flights - both of which had a long stopover before the next flight.

By relaxing and preparing, we mean doing things such as catching a local bus to the nearby beach, hunting down the nearest liquor store to get some honey bee or some beer...which turned out it was walking distance from our hotel!
We bought beer then decided we should get some more so walked up to find a MASSIVE queue. Me and Sarah tried the tactic that 'we're foreign, maybe if we walk straight to the front, they will serve us'. This wasn't so! Luckily an Indian man tapped me on the shoulder, asked what I wanted and bought the bottles for us...even ran across the road to change up some money so he could give us the correct change!
Whilst this was happening we were amused by the fact a rather large lady had walzed up to the front, using the same 'I'm foreign' tactic we tried and after being told to queue like the rest of them, she replied 'I'm a white western lady, I'm not queuing' to which she was ignored as she looked upon the Indian who was then passing our alcohol to us...HAH! unlucky chubs!

We got the local bus to the airport after saying our goodbyes to our Canadian friends and plan to see them later on in our trip with Ceasers waiting in Earls!!
Although we had had a great time in India, we were all ready to leave India whether it to go back home or to move onto the next country on our trip.
Our first flight went really well, we slept the whole way pretty much...1 thing which was a bit scary was the fact there was no limit to what liquids you could take through security for the plane as well as the security guy being more concerned with why I had used paper to put in my ears rather than what could potentially be in my pockets etc!...Nevertheless the first flight was over and now was the bad part...We had arrived in Delhi and had a 16hour wait in the airport for our next flight to Kathmandu...which meant a comfortable and peaceful sleep on the airport floor...if only! Using a flip flop to rest my hip on and the other to rest my knee on so it didn't hurt so I could maybe get a bit of shut-eye....it worked for an hour!...Whilst Sarah went for the sleeping upright in a chair, making a pillow out of the camera case and her Sarong...I don't think it even worked for half an hour!..12 hours later we were back up and counting down til 9am so we could check-in, so we could get a new boarding pass (in Kochi the security staff had stamped the wrong ticket, so security in Delhi wouldn't let us through until we had a new one!).




We managed to scrape enough of our last rupees to get a subway each before catching our flight to Kathmandu...woohooo...16hours ago this seemed like an ice age away! We got all seated and ready for an hours sleep before we heard some BIG, important and not so good news...There was a pretty big strike/protest going on...by pretty big we only mean the odd 700,000 people!! apparently the Maoists' were calling for the president to step down because they were promised that a constitution was going to be made for their party but this never happened...'ah well, a strike...when we were in Thailand there was one and it didn't affect us' so we thought everything would still be just dandy....Then we arrived at the airport in Kathmandu....we found out that because the strike was on, there was no public transport running apart from a tourist shuttle bus to and from Thamel to the airport. 2 hours later that bus arrived and we caught it to the city centre where we found a cheap guesthouse to stay. We then found out that this stirke was a BIG deal!!...not only was there no public transport but all the shops closed during the day apart from between 6pm-8pm, and restaurants stay pretty much closed 24/7.
So we had no way of getting out of Kathmandu (unless we flew domestically or internationally), no way of getting food (apart from at our hotel, and the fact there was a tiny little cafe opposite which kept open on the down-low!...very handy) and the only time we could shop was between 6 and 8pm!....hahah!! what else could we do but laugh!

As there was no traffic it made walking round a Capital city so easy! everyone walked through the little backstreets as well as along the main roads. There was also the fact that there was hardly any traffic pollution making the city very green (of which we care about very passionately!). There was however quite a few ambulances heading towards the strike where people had been injured and this seemed to become more frequent by the day.




Everywhere we walked, we seemed to find the strike...People wrapped in red flags, chanting and waving big sticks and signs...Quite intimidating, especially when they suddenly decide to run around the city and down the backstreets. On the other hand, it was strange; we would walk right through the heart of the strike and it seemed harmless, instead of finding guys being all violent and hitting everything in sight...we were greeted with "Namaste" or "hello how are you?"....very strange.
Police were everywhere, in full body armour, and with either a stick, a shotgun or a shield (I guess the lucky ones got the shotgun! and the very unlucky ones got just a stick...still better than nothing though!)
As we continued to walk round the city and see the sights, including climbing a million steps to a huge temple on the top of a hill, we managed to get away from it all. From the temple we could see the whole of Kathmandu as well as the valley in which it is situated. Unfortunately though it wasn't the clearest of days so we couldn't see the mountains very well.
We decided we would walk everywhere (not by choice) and decided one day to go a little out of the city to a little village. We got halfway there and then seemed to get sandwiched between the strike...it seemed to be a bit more violent now, so in the backstreets they came running through. Sarah's tactic was to stand next to a policeman with a shotgun and I thought climbing up a temple would be best so I could get a good view as well as be safe.

Now the strike has been going on for 5 days...3 of which we have been here for and seriously need to think of a plan. It seems that things are slowly getting sorted on the political issue but the strike seems to be getting worse, so to be honest we really have no clue what's going on!! We are hoping that we wake up and the strike has stopped so we can continue our trip in Nepal and move onto another city, or to a village just outside Kathmandu and continue what we had planned, but at the same time we have to have a plan in case the strike goes on for weeks!...which would mean we would need to book a way out of Nepal :-(

Although all this is going on we would still be in Kathmandu today regardless of the strike, but it has halted our way of getting around...making us become fitter and greener...so when you think about it we are saving the polar bears!...It has not just halted our ways of getting about but, a big blow for Sarah - it has halted her shopping to a maximum of 2 hours a day!haha...so maybe I should thank my lucky stars!...So far we have bought slippers and a book....I feel like we have aged about 40years where our priorities lie on keeping Sarah's feet warm while I read my book...it sounds very sad!
But to defend ourselves the book is a cracker! we have been recommended it since arriving in India and Sarah's slippers are awesome! typical Nepali style.

P.S Oh and how could I forget - we have bought incense sticks to keep our room smelling of coconuts.