First day

First day

Well I got here in the end after about 24 hrs of travelling in which I only managed to get about five minutes sleep, strangely from when the 2^nd plane started to take off until the seat belt signs were switched off which is possibly the most loudest part of the journey, bar landing. If anyone is travelling to Deli for a transfer flight, no matter what the people at the money exchange desk in London say, you cannot change money to get Indian rupees, so you will be stuck and unable to buy a drink or food.

When me and Amy, who just finished Worcester uni when I did and is doing similar work for a different charity, landed we were greeted by Mahendra and his team. His team included a photographer which was very surreal getting photographed coming out of the airport, I feel a lot of the people walking past were thinking ‘Who are they!’

We then took a taxi to the Kathmandu guest house, during which I experienced a monsoon. I didn’t think it was possible for that much rain to come down in such a short period of time. The streets were like rivers, I saw one person riding a bike through it but the water was almost up to the handle bars, I don’t know how they managed it. However, just after the rain had stopped the roads were dry again. If anyone is going Kathmandu for a night I would recommend the Kathmandu guest house, it’s a wonderfully relaxed little place in the heart of Thamel district, which is a very busy tourist area, and I think the most popular. Thamel is a great place but I think more than two nights there would be too much. Mahendra and Jyuti took us around the place to have a quick look round and visit some bars and a restaurant. Afterwards me and Amy took a stroll round and visited a bar where a band was covering various rock songs, they were a good band but they had problems with the power cuts, which interrupted various songs, including one song three times. However, they seemed fairly used to it. We also managed to lose the hotel a few times that night, I think perhaps due to the giant gate they had closed outside which obscured the path leading to it. At one point we were offered a rickshaw ride to the hotel, which I was about to except until I noticed he was parked under the hotel sign, so I have no idea where he was planning on taking us.