Moonlit procession

This is the view from the top of Poon Hill which is near Ghorepani in Nepal.

For a start the name is a massive misnomer... I didn't see a single poon up there! Probably because it was far too cold for that kind of nonsense...

Getting this photo involved waking up at 4.30 and trekking up a hill for 1 and a half hours.

Of course, this is a pretty famous viewing point, so I wasn't the only person to think of doing this. In fact it seemed like there were hundreds of us, all trekking up the side of the hill, all wearing the standard issue LED head-torches, trudging in single file in complete silence.

It was a kind of strange experience, almost like watching some medieval pilgrimage, it was easy to imagine that all of the lights shining up the hill were from flaming torches, all the hooded and swaddled trekkers were monks.

In fact it reminded me of a scene from an old game that I used to play at my mates house on his Amiga 500. The game was called moonstone, and was basically a glorified fighting game, the highlight of which was the ability to slice off your enemies head from time to time...

Aaaaaaanyway, the point was that in this game there was a scene with a load of monks going up a hill all carrying torches, and the sight of the procession up the hill reminded me of that.

Nice sunrise though.

Hail to the Addidas...

I just got back from trekking in the Himalayas, and I just have to take this time to praise my trusty footwear.


As you can see they aren't really designed for the task of climbing mountains, but they coped admirably...

For 2 weeks they handled everything that the Himalayas had to throw at them, going up to an altitude of 4130m, over high passes, mountain streams, rickety bridges and all manner of surfaces and slopes.

To be fair they are slightly the worse for wear now... the right one has a hole in the side of it, the left one has a huge hole in the base where it looks like my heel is going to fall out...

In spite of all of this I can't seem to bring myself to throw them away now... we have been through a lot together, maybe i will send them back to England where my mother can keep them (in an odour proof box) for posterity, and when I am famous they can be a site of pilgrimage for the faithful to visit....

Kathmandu part 4

Ok, I realise that I have left you all hanging for the 4th part of the story, and this is mainly because I have been trekking in the Himalayas. That post is still to come, but for now I will finish the Kathmandu part...

So I just came out of the airport, only to find that the taxi driver that had lent me the money for my visa was missing...

Of course another taxi driver grabbed me pretty much sraight away and stated pulling me towards his taxi.

I tried in vain to tell him that I had a taxi driver already, but he fobbed off my objections saying "My friend, he lent you money? It is ok, he told me to take you.."

I didn't see much of an alternative here either, so I follow this guy to another taxi, where he gives me to ANOTHER guy and explains that I owe 2000 Rupees (it was actually 3500) and that I can give it to this guy, it is ok...

Well, this guy takes me to a hotel, that is different to the one that the first guy wanted to take me to, and I get my room and everything seems to settle down for a while.

Having my tea later that evening I am approached by some guy who claims to be a travel agent (actually, he was a travel agent) and offers me various trekking offers, I decline them all, but agree to go with him to his office the next day. In the course of this conversation he mentions that the 3500 Rupees that I owe can also be paid to him (what kind of weird syndicate do they operate in Kathmandu anyway?).

I still have no money, so it is immaterial, and he soon leaves me alone. Shortly after this the second taxi driver appears, and offers to walk me to an ATM, where I can finally get some Rupees and pay SOMEONE back what I owe. This mission is accomplished reasonably easily, but instead of then taking me back to the hotel, he takes me down a small alley, where he says his friend can lend him a bike....

Thus begins a very short, a very hair raising, and an awakening experience of riding pillion through the streets of Kathmandu... If you read my post about Egyptian driving a few months ago ( http://trevssalsatravels.blogspot.com/2008/08/egypt-is-also-crazy.html ), well, the driving in Kathmandu is similar... slightly less manic, but on roads which are at the most one lane wide. It was surprisingly fun....

We eventually made it back to the hotel, where my new friend (who i haven't seen since) bade me goodnight, and I went to bed.

The next morning, true to his word, the travel agent took me to his offices. We walked there, a 10 minute walk. Who should appear in the crowds of Tamel but the original taxi driver, the one that lent me the cash in the first place for my visa.

He seemed to be a mix of shocked and delighted to see me. At any rate he rushed over and started asking me where had I got to, did I have his money, what hotel I was staying at, etc, etc... Between myself and the travel agent we calmed him down, I explained that I had paid back the cash to another taxi driver (this was, he claimed, the first he had heard of this). This wasn't helped by the fact that I couldn't give a name, or any contact details for this other driver....

He insisted on coming for breakfast with myself and my travel agent, where he had only a beer. And then left us....

This was pretty much the last I saw of this guy, except that he came to my hotel later that evening and sat with me for a while. But he left pretty much straight away when it was apparent that I was with someone else...

This was pretty much the end of my adventures in Kathmandu... A couple of days later I left to go Trekking (which I purchased off the aforementioned travel agent)... but that is another story...

Kathmandu or bust...

So I finally arrived in Kathmandu, after various ups and downs, and having managed to snatch half an hours sleep (making it at least an hours sleep in the previous 24 hours).

The first trauma was getting a visa. Luckily it is possible to attain a visa upon entry to Nepal without too much trouble. I say that... It wouldn't have been too much trouble if I had any money at all on me... Well, any dollars, pounds, euros or other major denominations on me.

I asked where the nearest ATM was and was told it was downstairs, past the visa control. was slightly nervous about this after the impossibility of getting past customs in India, but I needn't have worried... The ATM machine was in fact outside the airport, so I had to go through the visa control, down an escalator, through a security check, past the luggage carousel, through customs, and out of the airport. I did this without any hassle whatsoever, and in fact the police were very helpful the whole time in helping me to enter the country illegally...

My first major problem in fact was to get through the throngs of taxi drivers that were trying to take me to their hotels. I said no firmly to them all, and looked around for the ATM, which was luckily very well signposted. One of the taxi drivers tagged along with me anyway, and "showed" me where the ATM was...

Second major issue was discovering that the only ATM for about 5 miles was out of order...

The taxi driver offered to take me to a bank which was just around the corner. It was closed...

Then the taxi driver offered to lend me the money I needed to get my visa. I realised that I had little choice in the matter and agreed to his proposal then headed back into the airport clutching the cash and paperwork that I needed. Back through customs the wrong way, past the luggage conveyor, through a security check... the wrong way, up a down escalator (a bit like being on the travellator on gladiators...), past the lift which i saw that i could have taken up to the first floor, back through the visa control area, and to the back of the queue for visas.

With my newly stamped visa in mt passport I headed down the escalator again, through the security check, only to discover that my luggage hadn't arrived...

I shouldn't have been surprised really, I hadn't seen my backpack since I left Cyprus... Even if it had made it to Delhi I only had the words of the staff at Delhi that it had been picked up, that it had been kept safe, and that it had gotten on the flight. One of the last things that the staff there had done was hand me a label which was supposedly the ticket for my luggage. And bearing in mind that I hadn't even known that I was getting the flight until 20 minutes before it took off it wasn't too much of a surprise that my luggage hadn't made it onto the plane... Besides, the way my travels were going so far it would have been bucking the trend for my luggage to have arrived straight away...

I found out from someone that there would be some luggage on the next flight from Delhi, which was due in about an hour, so I went outside the airport (through customs again!) and told the driver the bad news. He wanted me to go for a cup of tea with him, but I decided to stay at the airport and wait for my bags, so I told him to wait outside for me and headed back inside (past customs again!!).

To cut a long story short my bags did finally arrive,not before most of the other people that were waiting for bags had left. I can honestly say that I have never been more relieved to see a bag in my life!

So I made my way past customs (for the 5th and final time!!!) and headed out into the (relatively) clear air outside the airport, only to discover that the taxi driver that I owed the cash to had vanished....

I think I'll save the finale (i hope) of the story for another post...

Lost in Transit...

So when I left you on the last post I was in the arrivals lounge in Delhi airport, unsure of my fate.

Well, now I am writing from the comfort of my bed in Kathmandu, but lots of stuff happened between the two states...

First of all the airport security agreed that I could fy on to Kathmandu... but I would have to wait for the next day as all of the flights that day were full... I agreed to this seeming to have little choice in the matter. There was still the little issue of how I was to pay for the flights, as their machines still refused to take my visa debit cards, and the only atms were on the wrong side of all of the security...

So I was taken up to the transit lounge, which wasn't a very luxurious place. It basically consisted of a lot of sun lounger type chairs, or 3 more upmarket type places where you could pay extra to stay for a few hours... I managed to get one of them down to 4500 Rupees to allow me to stay for as long as it took for my flight to come (this was complicated by the fact that I didn't actually have a ticket yet...) Even after this there was the small matter of having to pay them, as I still had no rupees. We got round this by the manager of the lounge basically smuggling me past security, I think possibly by promising them free drinks.

So here I was... at last, actually in India... I briefly considered the option of doing a run for it, but without my passport, and most of my possesions I didn't think i would last long. I was never really cut out for a life on the run.

Five minutes later I was back behind the security cordon, proud owner of 6000 rupees. If I'd had my wits about me I would probably thought to get the money I needed for the flight as well, but then things probably wouldn't have turned out so nice as they did...

I was back in the transit lounge, trying to make myself comfortable, availing myself of the free food and drink. Every so often the airport staff would come to find me, and we would make another effort for me to pay for my plane ticket. This incidentally included an effort by them to get me past security again. However all the efforts of two airport employees couldn't do what some lowly waiter in the transit lounge had managed to do a mere hour earlier... Interesting eh?

Anyway, back in the transit lounge I had just discovered that the internet didn't work (which was one of the main reasons I had agreed to pay the price) when the airport staff rushed over to me, slapped a ticket on the table and said, "you have to board now, this flight leaves in 10 minutes!!".

I quickly gathered all of my things together and ran after them, through the security that led to the departure lounge, through all the duty free, back up to the security so that they would give my bag a tag to prove that it had been checked (security in India is a bit anal like that), and finally to the boarding area where I was bussed, along with some other passengers, to the plane.

It was only when I sat down that I realised that they hadn't asked me to pay a penny for my flight ticket...

You may think that the story is over now, but there is still the adventures that occured once that I arrived in Kathmandu... I'll leave that for another post...

The Joy of Travelling... part 1

Stuck in Delhi Arrivals Lounge...

I guess this is one of those things that makes travelling worthwhile... One of those things that I will laugh about as I tell people about it when I'm finally home (I guess I'm kinda missing out on that treat as I'm telling you right now, but at least you get to call me a dumb-ass...)

To be fair things could be worse... but this doesn't bode well as the first leg of my asian adventure...

You see... it isn't possible to get a visa on arrival in India! I know! Who knew?? I certainly didn't! The first hint I had was a few minutes after I arrived and the guy was giving me a puzzled look when I told him I didn't have a visa. The fact that he immidiately called over some security guards also didn't inspire confidence...

At first it was looking like they were going to force me to fly back to Cyprus... This would have been... embarassing, to say the least... Also very counter productive... Setting me back to square one, and wasting over £350 and about 3 days!

I have managed to convince them that they can send me on to Kathmandu. So I am at the moment sat in an Executive lounge, that set me back much more then a hotel would have (though the drinks are free... I've resisted so far, but I can see this getting messy later on...) Did I mention that they couldn't get me on the flight today? So I am in this executive "luxury" for 24 hours, at least.

I was planning to go to Kathmandu eventually anyway, so in a sense I have saved myself a few days, spent a bit of extra money, and made a minor fool of myself... So it wasnt a total waste!

There are still some issues with paying for my airline ticket, namely that they are refusing to accept my Visa Debit cards, and the only ATM is on the wrong side of the security that seperates the airport from India. So look out for updates, and I'll try to keep you posted.

If this goes on much longer i'll be like that guy in the film where Tom Hanks is living in an airport for some reason...

To be continued...