It is the middle of the night and the monsoon rains are
falling heavily. Kathmandu was
completely dry for the first 24 hours and so I naively believed one of the
locals who told me that the rains were pretty much done for this year. The UK isn’t the only country where a pocket
umbrella is of the utmost convenience.
Alas, I packed mine away on the North Circular J
Having left Africa in mid-July and spent the rest of the
summer in various parts of England, with a slight detour to Pakistan, it feels
a little strange living out of a rucksack again and having to sort everything
out for myself. I arrived without much
of a plan other than that I wanted to trek and do some yoga. There are to be no “Eat, Pray, Love”
comparisons, thank you very much. Javier
Bardem, however, is welcome to make an appearance...
Things started slowly in Kathmandu. Maybe it was the long flight and losing a
night but I seemed to wander somewhat aimlessly for the first couple of days,
unaided by an erratic sleep pattern. The
sleep clearly still isn’t right but after three nights in a cheap (very clean)
hotel room with little natural light, I have upped the budget to enjoy a hotel
with a garden (and which does not reside above a nightclub). Things are looking up and the puzzle of how
to spend the next 45 days is starting to come together.
I shall be abandoning Kathmandu on Wednesday to head for
Pokhara. It has a reputation for being
far more chilled out than the madness of Kathmandu and is also the start point
for my Annapurna Base Camp trek on Sunday.
The trek will take 10 days, should involve regular showering, and is
hopefully the perfect prelude to 10 days of yoga and meditation near Pokhara.
With a visa extension, it looks like I should be able to
head back to Kathmandu and then join an eight day trip to Tibet. I just need to get my head around paying the
airfare from Lhasa to Kathmandu when it is in the opposite direction to my
desired travel plans. The fact is that
the Chinese authorities force you to return to Kathmandu at the end of the trip
and you can only travel into Tibet from Nepal on a group tourist visa. But if not now, when? And so I shall likely suck it up and hand
over the cash. It is apparently a
spectacular flight.
And so, after a few weeks of relying on comfortable English
trains, it is nearly time to get back on a bus for 7-8 hours. A “tourist bus”
runs between Kathmandu and Pokhara each day, and if reports are to be believed,
it will not be too cramped. Hurrah! I’m not ready for local buses again yet…
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