Hi from Kathmandu

Greetings from Kathmandu! I arrived here yesterday lunchtime following an overnight flight from Singapore and then connecting to Kathmandu. I was met at the airport by Chris, our guide, and Paul Theriault, one of Paul Day's friends (yes, this blog will appear confusing at times). After checking into the hotel in the very busy Thamel area, Paul and I went for a wander down to Durbar Square which is a very old part of the city and which was once Kathmandu's Royal Palace. I have attached a photo of some of the many temples in the square and surrounding areas. The traffic and chaos around here is quite something to be seen. The "streets" are quite narrow and there are cars, bikes, people and the odd cow going in both directions. Naturally there is a fair bit of gridlock at busy times of the day. The photo below is of a typical situation where two cars meet at a narrow point and nothing can get past (pedestrians included!).

That evening we sat on the hotel's rooftop to enjoy a beer, only to hear the hotel's generator kick in at the same time to supply it's power - due to the need of having to distribute limited electricty around the city, there are scheduled outages that occur throughout the day. Unfortunately ours was just as started to have a beer! We wandered around Thamel that night before I went to sleep early having only had three hours the night before on the Perth to Singapore flight (I can't understand why they served dinner at 3.30am!!).

This morning Paul, Chris and I went to hire climbing gear for the Island Peak ascent - A$60 for everything, including harness, plastic boots, crampons, ice axe, ascender, carabiners etc. Paul Day (PaulD) arrives this afternoon by which time the full compliment of our trekking group (i.e. PaulD, PaulT, myself and Chris the guide) will be here. We are flying to the tiny Lukla airstrip on Monday to commence our trekking and to ultimately get to the top of Island Peak (Imja Tse).